


Roxy: Breathe With Me

by MelodramaticMrTails



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Depression, Derse Scientists, F/M, Language Barrier, Prospit Mermaids, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:27:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodramaticMrTails/pseuds/MelodramaticMrTails
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You want to let him go. You want him to be happy. But- you also want to be happy. What will you do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What is his name?

You were not made to be kept in a tiny square. You want to be in the ocean. You should have listened to Karkat. Sure he can puff himself out of proportion, but he’s usually right. You can’t really recall a time he was completely wrong. Gosh he can puff himself out. You chuckle and it’s short and brief, but noticeable all the same.

_“What was that?”_

_“I think it laughed.”_

_“Can they laugh?”_

_“As social creatures, I don’t see why not.”_

You can’t hear them very well, but you can see them. The walls of your tiny prison are clear and the air outside of it is dark. You live thousands of miles under the surface, seeing the dark is your specialty, though at this rate if you don’t get some sun, you’ll lose even that. Your eyesight has never been all that great in the first place, but in the habitat you live, or lived actually, in, it was never an issue.

So far, you’ve counted four separate weird alien things. You think there’s four. They all kind of look the same to you. There’s the one in the scarf and the one in the hood, then two with weird black eyes; one that has sharp and pointy eyes and one that has round ones. To be quite honest, you have no idea what they are. They almost appear to be similar to you, but they have this weird smooth skin and dim eyes and two tails that sort of bend like your arms instead of swish like your fins.

You want to think they’re humans, but humans are nice. Your father was saved by a human. He said she was kind and beautiful and brilliant. You see nothing kind, or beautiful, or brilliant here. They keep you here and stare at you and you want to hide but there’s barely enough room in this prison to move let alone anywhere to hide. They poke at you, and rip off your scales, and use weird words you’ve never heard before in a dialect you can barely understand and you’re frightened. You feel like you’ll suffocate, but you won’t because they’re feeding you oxygen that taste too clean.

You’ve stopped eating the fish they drop in your tank. You’re not hungry enough to eat, anyways. You’d just make yourself sick. They put plankton and this weird fizzy rocks in your water and you don’t starve. You miss the rocking of the ocean and you miss swimming and you miss the sun. You don’t know how much more of this you can take.

You’re an expensive paperweight. That’s what the one with the black round eyes keeps calling you. You don’t know what either of these words mean.

_”He’s getting paler.”_

_“He’s not dying. His vitals are all stable.”_

A hand pressed to your wall and immediately, you snap forward to bite it. You bash your face hard into the weird clear surface. You don’t understand what’s holding you here. You hate it. You hate them.

_”Be careful.”_

_“He can’t hurt me.”_

You can. You can kill seals and take on sharks. Hurting these weird creatures would be easy. They’re small and tender looking. Disgusting.

_”I think he needs sunlight.”_

Yes. You would love some sunlight. They’d have to let you out for that, surely. Then you could escape. Whatever direction you need to go, you could escape. You wouldn’t even have to do that, just get away from here.

_”What do you want to do?”_

_“Let’s get some sun lamps in here.”_

You watch them leave. You have no idea what a lamp is. As soon as they’re gone, you float upwards towards the surface of your prison. There’s no air in here. You wish so much to feel nice cool air on your skin and scales again. You shove and bite and bang against the surface but nothing happens. Nothing ever has, but you try anyways. So you just drift back to the bottom of your prison and curl your tail back in on itself and hug yourself.

You miss your dad and your nana and your brothers and sisters.

Three of them come back and you gently swish your head away so you don’t have to look at them. The one with the round eyes taps on your water and it irritates yours senses but you don’t respond to it.

_”bro it’s probably going to die in there”_

_“Are you sure it knows how to talk?”_

_“She said it was very fluid in language, even if not english.”_

_“well shit it probably doesn’t even understand us”_

You do. You can hear them. You can sense them and their thoughts and it’s weird. You can hear colours and sounds and words, but no pictures. It’s like they don’t understand how to communicate.

 _”Hey,”_  the pointy one is speaking to you. His face is close to yours and yet you’re still separated by the water. _”We’re trying to get you everything you need, alright? You have to tell us if you need something else."_

You don’t fully understand everything they try to say to you, but you comprehend enough to get the ideas across. They want you to live. They don’t want to set you free. You show your teeth at him. He answers by showing his own, but they’re dull and not very threatening.

Suddenly there’s light in your face. Your pupils flicker in confusion and your momentarily disoriented. Your sight goes dim as your pupils expand to soak up and store the precious light. It hurts. That isn’t the sun. You cover your face with your arms and bristle your gills sharply. You know better by now than to release your toxins here, though. You’ll just make yourself sick.

_”Sorry. Here.”_

You can feel the light on your skin and it’s dimmer now, but it’s still not the sun. It’s not warm, it’s not what you want. You need to store light in order to see, though, and they keep you in the dark for so long, you need this. You uncover your face to look at the creature again. You can’t see him very well right now, but you know he’s being aggressive towards you.

_”dude i don’t think it’s smiling”_

_“You’re probably right.”_

You hear him tell you the words skinny and a blue expansion that you don’t think is the ocean. Then you stop listening. You have to watch them move around and talk about you like you’re not there and it just makes you sad. You’d do anything for one of your dad’s fish cakes right now and you hate his stupid cake things. You don’t even know what cake is but you want one so bad.

Eventually they all leave and they turn the lights off and their ‘machines’ off and you’re alone again. You try to break the surface and again, nothing works. You try to sleep. It doesn’t come easy for you here, not without the gentle sway of the ocean or your lovely coral bed, but you eventually nod off in the bottom of your prison.

Not for long, whether this is unfortunate or not. You can see so much better now that you’ve had enough light. The figure that moves towards you is unstable on her tails and all you can hear her say is blurs of weird symbols and colours. It’s the one in the scarf. She approaches you with misplaced determination and holds a finger over her lips. You’re not sure what to think about that.

She walks behind your tank and you lose sight of her for a few moments. When she returns, she’s pushing a barrel on a contraption. She leans against your prison and looks at you like she feels bad for you. You’re not sure these creatures can feel that, though.

“i’m gonna let you stretch ok?” she says. Stretch? Is she letting you go? “you have to promise not to bit me though, ok? bite. don’t bite me”

You hold a finger over your mouth. If she’s going to let you out, you have no reason to bite her. She shows her teeth at you. No. Wait. She smiles. You think, for a moment, maybe they show their teeth for different reasons than you do. She disappears again and returns with a small, pointy hill. She pushes it against your prison and quickly climbs to the top. You swim to the surface, excitedly twirling yourself around to see what she’s doing.

Distantly, you hear a bright exclamation of red and more symbols you don’t really understand. You try to alert her to the sudden intrusion, but she ignores you. You try again, louder, but she just doesn’t respond. You want out! Just let her get the lid off!

_”Roxy?”_

“oh dirk! uh hi there i thought you was sleep?” 

You bang on the surface, but it won’t budge. No! You were so close!

_”What are you doing?”_

“i uh. i was just gonna take him fur a swim. for.” 

You can nuzzle that goodbye.

“You can’t get him out by yourself.” 

You’re confused again. He approaches your prison and you stare at him calmly. He doesn’t speak to you, though. Roxy peers down at you calmly, holding a finger to her lips again. You mimic the motion.

“don’t bite dirk ok?” she tells you and you flutter your fins out slightly. As long as you’re getting out, you don’t care. Roxy removes the surface. Instantly, you plunge your head out and you’re met with wonderfully cool air. It’s not fresh air, but at least it’s not that stuff they feed to you. You grapple at the side with your webbed fingers for a moment before diving back down.

“Wait-”

You shoot up with as much power as you can manage in such a short stroke. It’s enough to launch you out of the prison. The air feels fantastic on your scales. You didn’t plan any further than this. You hit the ground hard, but it doesn’t really bother you. Your hard outer coating and strong swimming muscles prevent you from taking too much damage.

“whoops!” Roxy makes a weird noise at you and it’s full of teeth but you hear her joy. You- didn’t think they felt joy. “haha. hold on there mr. gills” She climbs down and Dirk carefully grabs you around your chest. You don’t like his skin so close to your gills. It feels so weird and smooth.

“He’s heavy. Give me a hand, Roxy,” Dirk says. Roxy nods her head at him and then she’s grabbing your tail. He skin is even softer and it’s really weird to be touched by these things. Between the two of them, they manage to lift you up into the barrel and back into salted water. You don’t really fit in it, but you don’t plan on being in it for very long. You hang out the side and your gills flutter happily at the fresh air against them.

This is the happiest you’ve been in a long time. They’re actually taking you away. You never thought they would. You tell them how happy you are. To tell them images of your dad and your brothers and sisters and your beautiful ocean and city and bed and every happy image you can think of. Neither of them seem to hear you. Maybe they’re stupid. Instead, you purr.

“listen to that. he’s hoppy. happy,” Roxy says, leaning over the back of the little rolly device and towards you. You touch her throat. Dirk tells you how unhappy he is about this. You guess they’re matesprits. He’s just jealous? They cart you down the same area they had brought you in through. You still remember. That was a couple suns ago. The longer you stay here the worse your sense of rotation gets.

They don’t take you back to the ocean. They take you to another room with some kind of fake ocean in it. This is not what you wanted. You’re not sure what you expected, exactly. Did you really think they’d let you go? For a little while, maybe. You stop purring. They bring you to the edge of the water and knock your barrel over, dumping you in a heap into the fake ocean they’ve created.

You swim away at once. It cooler than your prison and bigger, too. You guess that makes it better. You explore a bit and at least there’s a floor here. It’s covered with things that remind you of the ocean. There’s little crabs at the bottom in sand, and coral clinging to the sides, and even little fish. It’s essentially a tide pool. It only makes you more homesick. Still, it is technically better. You snap a piece of coral off and quickly take back for the surface. You swim in the opposite direction of your captors and climb out of the water. The floor outside of the tidepool is not sandy, though. It’s cold and hard but smooth.

Roxy’s telling you how confused she is and Dirk is curious, but you ignore both of them. Instead, you try to comfort yourself. You rub the rough coral over your skin and scales firmly. Oh yes, that’s nice. You haven’t been able to groom yourself in, however long you’ve been here. You grind away your old, loose scales and buff your skin and it’s just great. It’s nothing compared to the very thought of going home, but you feel good for a little while.

“i think he needs air” you can hear Roxy say. Yeah. They’re stupid. You’re pretty sure they’re humans now, but you dad never mentioned they were like this. It’s so weird. Roxy approaches you and you don’t react. There’s nothing separating you now. You will attack her if you feel the need to. She crouches beside you and nearly flings herself into the water in the process.

“do you have a nag? name,” she asks. She smells weird. You tell her your name. She doesn’t seem to hear you. You tell her again, louder. She can’t hear you. It’s so weird. You guess you have to say words at her. You’ve never really understand the point of communicated with mouth bits, but obviously that’s the only way they’re going to understand you. You try your best.

“yes,” and the words are weird in your mouth. Your tongue shouldn’t work like that.

“you do?!” Roxy yelps. You lean away from her, snapping your gills shut all at once. Is she really that surprised you have a name? “well?” You have no idea what your name is in human. It’s not really something that goes into words because your people don’t _use_ words. You try anyways.

“god is gracious.”

“John,” Dirk says. Roxy glances at him for a moment and she tells you how interested she is and how much she likes that name. You have to wonder now, though, why they can talk to you but can’t hear you. Humans are weird.

“can we call you john?” she asks you. Your name is not John. You don’t know what a John is.

“yes.” And you don’t care. You just want to leave. They’ll have to let you leave eventually. You return to rubbing off your scales. Roxy scoots closer to you and you dislike it. She just wants to poke and prod at you some more.

“so whatcha doin there john?” she questions you and you can hear her tell you how friendly she is, but it’s not friendly. She’s just happy. There’s a difference. It’s filled with these weird bubbles and colours and thoughts and you think it may actually be affecting how you think. You want her to go away.

“more scales painful. take away old,” and you sound stupid even to yourself. Incoherent even. You don’t understand why you can’t comprehend your thoughts into such a simple language. There aren’t enough words to translate your thoughts. You give up trying.

“you’re gromin yourself?” she corrects for you.

“yes,” you answer and you’re irritated. 'Grooming' is such a stupid word. 

“i’m sowory. sorry. i didn’t know you had to do that we would have let ya you know”

“questions not words,” you insist. You’ve told them a lot of things. You’ve tried to tell them so many things when they first brought you here. You screamed at them to let you go, that the things they did hurt, that you wanted them to stop, and they didn’t listen to you. Now you know why. They’re stupid. You’re stupid.

“you want me to ask you questions?” That is not even close to what you want.

“no.” You want to leave. You watch her pick up one of your broken scales and the bright blue color stands out against her weirdly coloured skin. It sort of reminds you of dry dirt, but a little paler. Not quite the colour of kelp, though, and not of wood, either. Maybe a starfish. It’s so weird. You touch her neck again. She doesn’t have gills, so you’re not sure it means the same thing to her as it does to you, but it gets her attention all the same.

You tap your mouth with your finger and she looks confused.

“kiss,” you say. “mouth kiss.” You try to tell her again without dumb human words, but still can’t hear you. It’s frustrating to say the least. She stares at you for a few moments. Her eyes are so dull, it makes you think there’s something wrong with her. Dirk is still watching, admittedly from a safe distance, but you’re confident in your ability to outrun him.

“you wanna kiss?” Roxy repeats. You flutter your gills. That’s exactly what you want. You can hear Dirk sending out warning signs, but they can’t hear you and they can’t hear each other. “do you have a crush on me john?” she makes another weird noise. You have no idea what she’s saying. You just flutter your gills again and hope it’s good.

“Roxy,” Dirk warns. Roxy pays him no mind. She touches your gills and you don’t want her to. Her skin is really starting to creep you out. However, she kisses you all the same.

You make a run for it. It only takes a few precious seconds for your tail to split right down the middle. It hurts something awful, like when they stab at you with their equipment only a thousand times over. You feel like you should be bleeding and you can only be glad that you’re not. You weren’t expecting running to be so hard, unfortunately.

The two humans are only confused for so long before Dirk is running after you. Regrettably, you don’t even make it to the door before your tails buckle at the joints. You fall and this time, it does hurt. Your scales are gone and your underskin is just completely exposed. Now you do bleed. Dirk grabs you at the neck and pressing you into the smooth floor forcibly. You’ve wasted your one chance.

“dirk let him go!” Roxy snaps. Dirk lets you go. You don’t want to try walking again, anyways. Everything hurts. Your tail joints, especially. It’s like you’ve been punctured by one of Vriska’s spines. No, it’s worse than that.

“water,” you say with your new, weird human teeth. It feels less awkward now, but twice as wrong.

“he wants to go back in the water,” Roxy confirms. You don’t bother looking at either of them. Your face is wet and you don’t know why. What do you know lately? You don’t know anything. You don’t understand anything. Everything is new and foreign and weird and you hate it. Dirk doesn’t say anything. “look you’ve made john cry. put him back in the water dirk”

Dirk picks you up. You’re lighter now, you guess, and he doesn’t have a probably carrying you by himself back to the fake ocean. He doesn’t drop you in like you’re expecting, but rather just sinks you in gently feet first. You warp back to normal and quietly swim to the bottom of the shallow water to regain yourself. You’re completely missing some scales halfway down your tail now and the under skin is tender and sore.

You sink to the bottom, lying limply on the sand and just for a moment, you can pretend you’re not in some fake, stupid ocean in some stupid human hive with stupid humans. You can’t pretend for very long. You hear one of them splash the surface of the water and you glance over to see Roxy’s hand just under the surface. You don’t want to bite her. You like her. She seems to beckon you over and you don’t want to go.

Of course, you do anyways. You’ll just apologise is all. You didn’t want to trick her like that, but you had to try, didn’t you? You’re in a fucking plastic tidepool, for god’s sake. You peer your face out of the water near her and she crouches at the edge. You could drag her under. You could drown her and Dirk would jump in to save her and they’re both be at your mercy. You don’t. You don’t want to hurt them. Not really.

“john,” she says. That’s not your name. “i know you want to leave” This doesn’t make you feel better. She dips her hand into the water, though, and touches your gills softly. You don’t think she understands what it means to you, but it’s nice. “but you can’t.”

“home,” you tell her and again you try to convey every rational thought that she can’t hear with her tiny brain. She doesn’t listen.

“i know,” she repeats instead. “you can’t go home.”

“Tell him, Roxy,” Dirk says firmly. You don’t want to be told. They tell you it’s sad, and dark, and depressing. You don’t want anything clearer than that. Roxy sighs and the air of incoherence that sounded her previously is cut through suddenly and sharply.

“john, there was an oil spill over your home.” You don’t remember that. You know nothing about that. There’s not oil anywhere near your home. She’s lying. “the entire system around there is shot. we’ve tried looking for others like you, but they’re fled by now john. we couldn’t take you back there right now even if we wanted to. there’s a whole bunch of crews and news reporters and everything. they’d see you. we barely got you here without anyone seeing you.”

She’s a liar. You quickly reel away from her touch.

“We have Feferi and Cronus out there looking for anyone else like you and they’ve found nothing. Which is only slightly better than finding them dead, John,” Dirk assures you. That doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t making sense. If they were keeping you here for your own good, then why did they have you trapped in a tank like that? Why were they stabbing at you and ripping your scales off?

“so please just let us take care of you john. we’ll let you go as soon as we can, but for right now you’re just safer here.”

You wish you could drown. You attempt to.

You close up your gills and stop swimming and wait. The only thing this accomplishes is making you float on the top of the water like a dead fish, that unfortunately isn’t dead. You decide to remain like this, though, it’s easier than swimming right now. You don’t even want to swim, how pathetic is that?

“can i swim with you john?” Roxy asks. You don’t care. Can humans even swim? The water’s weirdly crystal clear, anyways, so they can’t blame you if she drowns herself. Lucky shimp. You don’t give her an answer and she obviously takes that as a yes. Maybe you fluttered your gills a little too much. You can see her take off her scarf and then her outer skin. You didn’t know humans could take off their outer skin.

Here underskin is an even colour accept over her breast and hips where it’s suddenly pink. You’ve never seen a such a pattern on your own people. She climbs in and you are curious about her, but you can’t bring yourself to explore. You hate yourself for it, because you actually want to but your body vehemently refuses. You’re so useless.

“Roxy,” Dirk says again and he uncaptachalogues his sword. Yeah, you wish you still had your sylladex. They took your modi from you when you got here, which renders your sylladex fin up useless.

“oh shush dirk. the water’snice, come in with us,” she insists. He doesn’t do that. Roxy swims over towards you and it’s not very elegant and she splashes water pretty much everywhere, but she doesn’t drown. You don’t want her to drown, really, but if it happens then it happens. She touches your tail and you force yourself to roll over and interact with her. It’s a little easier to make yourself do it now that she’s actually close to you.

You twirl around her, careful to keep enough space as to not actually touch her or brush against her. Her pink colors turn white around her back and bottom. You’re not sure how this helps her and it’s actually rather unappealing. She pets your hip and follows your tail, careful of your fins, so you pet her in return. You guide your fingers over the strange white stripe.

It’s sort of bumpy. Is that her bone? You press a little harder. It snaps off. You broke her!

“oh!”

“Hey!”

You swim away quickly, hiding yourself behind a bed of coral and carefully peering out. You didn’t mean to hurt her! You should have known they were really fragile. Roxy reaches for her back and after a few awkward moments, doesn’t seem to be bleeding at all. Did she just heal herself? What?

“john.” Roxy swims towards you and you swim away calmly. “you just unhooked my bra, john. it’s okay mr. frisky” That noise she makes is really starting to make you nervous. What kind of creature would make a noise like that?!

“i can take it off, hold on!”

“Roxy, don’t take your bra off,” Dirk tells her.

“oh gtfo dirk. he doesn’t even wear clothes,” and then she removes her underskin. You don’t know what’s happening anymore. Humans have two outer skins? What’s even the point of that? And how does it even help if they’re so easy to remove? That offers zero protection. No wonder they’re so soft and squishy.

 _“what the ever loving hell is going on in here?? rose is gonna murder you guys”_  the one with the round eyes enters the room suddenly and you cautiously swim to the opposite side of your pool. He’s telling you weird things and Dirk is annoyed. Roxy isn’t paying him any attention, though, swimming towards you again.

“He needed some exercise.”

_“bro you know the pools for rose’s weird obsession thing”_

“we were careful!” Roxy assures him, reaching towards you to touch your gills again. It’s not completely horrible, you guess. It’s better than not at all. “john’s tank isn’t done yes! so don’t tell her and we won’t have a problem.”

“Yeah. We’re going to have drain half of it, anyways. It looks like they all need air, or at least like it,” Dirk explains.

 _“he needs to go back before you wake her up and she tears you a new one”_  he scoffs.

“fiine,” Roxy whines and she strokes the fins just below your hips. “you have to go back in your tank now, john, ok?”

_“did you really name it john??”_

“Apparently his name is similar to ‘John’.”

“do you want to walk?” Roxy asks you kindly. You’re not sure what to think of this sudden change of treatment. They’ve been so cruel to you up until now. You shake your head. You don’t want to walk anywhere. It hurts to walk. Walking is dumb. “ok. help me get him out.”

_“so it does talk?”_

“Barely,” Dirk responds. The pair of them approach you and you duck under the water again. You don’t really want to go back in your prison. Regardless of whether this out away or not, it’s better than that thing.

“it’s okay,” Roxy says, scratching her nails against your scales. Oh wow. Wow that’s amazing. How is she doing that? This, somehow, convinces you to go along with them for now. “you’ll have your own little home soon i promise”

You’d much rather go home. The three of them lift you out of the water carefully and back into the barrel they’d brought you in. It’s mostly empty now, but you don’t really mind. It’s hard to mind anything. The one with the round eyes is telling you about how much he’d really like to mate with Roxy and you honestly don’t want to know anything about humans and their mating rituals at all. Not even a little bit.

“Put your shirt back on,” Dirk mumbles and he tells you how he is equally unhappy with their mating rituals.

“no way. what’s wrong dirk? they’re just breasts.”

_”yeah man leave her alone”_

Dirk sighs.

Though you don’t want to go back in the tank, you guess you have no choice right now. It takes both him and the one with the round eyes to carry you back to the top and slip you back inside. They replace the surface and what little water had been dispatched is replaced. Roxy leans against the bottom of your prison and you sink down towards her.

She tells you she’s sorry.

You believe her.


	2. Drown

John hasn’t been home in a few suns. That’s not exactly unusual for him, especially when he’s with Jake, but he’s not with Jake. You know he’s not with Jake because Jake is here. Where he should be. You’re rather concerned for him now. He said he was going to check out the surface and you told him not you and he said he wouldn’t but you’re pretty fucking sure he did anyways. There’s been a lot of weird creatures around lately. Dad Egbert says they’re humans, but you’re not too sure about that. They’re kind of dangerous, though, and don’t taste very good, so it’s just best if everyone stays away from them.

John, obviously, probably didn’t do this.

H3Y K4RK4T!

You inhale sharply in surprise and puff up like a bubble. Why does she do that?! You hear Terezi chortle behind you and she think’s she’s so hilarious. You hope she gets her horns stuck in the sand. She gives you a mild shove and you go floating gently in that direction. Your fins are pretty much useless when you’re at full size like this. That’s probably why she keeps doing it. She grabs your whiskers and holds you in place carefully while you snarl at her.

YOU FUCKING JELLYFISH EATING FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? you snap at her angrily. She just flutters her gills at you like a moron.

SO WH3R3’S YOUR M4T3SPR1T? NO ON3’S S33N H1M 1N 4 F3W D4YS, she says curiously. You deflate slowly, but she keeps a firm hold on your sensitive whiskers. You’d pull away, but that would hurt. You show your teeth at her, but she doesn’t find you very intimidating. Your teeth are kind of nubby anyways.

HOW SHOULD I FUCKING KNOW? He’s not actually your matesprit, after all. You just hang out together a lot and had some fries that one time, but that doesn’t make you matesprits. Terezi knows this, too, but honestly, when has that stopped anyone? Even Dad Egbert thinks you’re matesprits. You just stop arguing now.

H3 PROB4BLY GOT 34T3N BY 4 SH4RK L1KE SOLLUX, she teases. You start to puff up again.

PROBABLY, you snap back. Sollux didn’t get eaten. You don’t know what happened to him, but he didn’t get eaten. The entire school went out and fucked up every shark they could find and none of you found any of Sollux. You don’t think he ran away. He had a good thing going on here. Maybe she’s right about something, though, maybe the same thing happened to John.

You should talk to Dad Egbert about the humans. He doesn’t really like to talk about it, but his son is missing.

F1GUR3S TH3 ONLY M4T3SPR1T YOU G3T W1NDS UP D1SH FOOD, Terezi chortles and you bash her with your tail. Your kind of small, so it doesn’t actually do anything, but she lets you go and you flutter out of reach.

WHERE’S GAMZEE?

H3 W3NT W1TH K4N4Y4 TO TH3 SURF4C3.

You puff up again.

WHAT?! Why would he do something like that? No, because he’s stupid. He’d drown if you didn’t watch him. Your question should be, why would _Kanaya_ do something like that?

Y34H. K4N4Y4 S41D SH3 W4NT3D TO S33 TH3M UP CLOS3 FOR H3R R3S34RCH, Terezi explains. Oh god, Kanaya and her stupid fashion. They don’t have anything pretty! They don’t even have scales! Or shells! They’re just under flesh and weird limp outer flesh. G4MZ33 W3NT W1TH H3R FOR PROT3CT1ON.

I THOUGHT HARLEY AND ENGLISH SAID NO?

4DV3NTUR3 W4S M3NT1ON3D 4 LOT.

OH FUCKING FANTASTIC. LET’S ALL GO AND EXPLORE THINGS THAT COULD POSSIBLY KILL US.

DON’T B3 SUCH 4 FRY, K4RKL3S, TH3R3’S NOTH1NG SC4RY 4BOUT TH3M. 1’LL GO UP TH3R3 R1GHT NOW, she gloats. Immediately, she begins swimmy straight up and quickly, you follow here.

TEREZI DON’T! Fortunately, she doesn’t. Unfortunately, she doesn’t because Gamzee is barreling back down with a trail of blood following him. The sharks he’s attracting are the last of your concern right now. He doesn’t stop. Terezi looks at you worriedly before both of you shoot off after him.

GAMZEE!

G4MZ33 HOLD ON!

MoThErFuCkErS gOt KaNaYa! MoThErFuCkErS gOt KaNaYa! he replies and heads straight for the hive cluster. You knew nothing good could come of this! GrAnD hIgHbLoOd!

Everyone’s emerging from their hives slowly, alerted to Gamzee’s distress and quickly triggering distress of their own. You and Terezi stay a decent distance away as Gamzee stops mid cluster. Harley and English meet him there, both on guard and teeth bared. Only when Gamzee stops can you see the pole in his side, running him through.

Gamzee my dear fellow what on earth happened to you? Harely asks curiously, though he's already concerned of Gamzee's wound. The Grand Highblood roars from his crevice in the middle of the cluster. English quickly tries to pip him down.

ThE mOtHeRfUcKiNg SuRfAcE cReAtUrEs ToOk HeR iN a NeT!

THE HUMANS ARE HARMLESS, Dad Egbert emerges quickly. English turns on him quickly.

i think gamzee would beg to differ!

Did you try to rescue her chap?

MoThErFuCkInG oF cOuRsE! Gamzee promises and gestures to the shiny new metal post in him.

Where is the summoner? Where is the dolorosa?!

John has not been back yet, either! Jane says suddenly from the crowd. I think the humans must have taken him, too!

Then they are 8egging to 8e taken out. The only answer is a full fledged frontal assault, the Marquise insists. We will take out their moving hive then locate their cluster and destroy it.

YOU CAN NOT, Dad Egbert demands. THEY ARE HARMLESS. INJURING THEM WOULD BE FROWNED UPON GREATLY.

We’re in quite the pickle right now i’m afraid.

Wh4t do3s th3 Gr4nd H1ghblood s4y? Neophyte shouts. Everyone goes quiet to listen. The crevice exhales a large bubble and his massive twisted horns emerge from out of the floor. English paps him carefully, keeping him calm and controlled. He places two massive hands on the floor, more like walrus paws than fins. Slowly, he thumps out his decision.

he says do not approach the humans! English says. he says our fry are not in any harm! the humans do not wish us any harm as long as we do not harm them! he says we are not our ancestors!

And slowly, he returns to his crevice. Everyone erupts into murmurs again. Surprisingly, Dad Egbert does not look at all pleased. He looks almost sad, actually. You wonder why. He said they were harmless, right? He shouldn’t be worried.

You are, though. You don’t trust them. You really do hope John is safe though at this point, you don’t know where he’s safer.

Co+me o+n, Gamzee. I’ll patch yo+u up. You hear her mourn.

== >

You sleep half decently over the night and in the morning, you ask if you can have a fish. You have to ask with your mouth, unfortunately, and it doesn’t work very well. You just spit out bubbles. This is probably why your people don’t use your mouths for talking. Roxy climbs to the top of your prison to remove the surface and you ask again.

With the small amount of stretching you got yesterday, you manage to eat without feeling completely sick. You now understand why your dad had trouble eating for a long time. The only difference in your day now is that Roxy will stand near your walls sometimes. Regretfully, this actually makes you feel less lonely. She tells you things and many of them are fuzzy or obscure, but you listen anyways. It has occurred to you that they probably don’t know you can hear them.

“ooh dave! whatcha got there?”

_ ”Some ridiculous contraption, I’m sure. _

_ “it’s your mother’s old radio figures there had to be a reason she kept it around, right??” _

_ “I assumed it to be sentiment, but perhaps you’re right.”_

You don’t have the least idea what a radio is.

“what was that?”

_ ”what??” _

“nevermind.”

_ ”it actually still picks up some wicked stations listen” _

You’re forced to listen to them fumble around with their stupid little things and you have no interest in any of it. When can you go home? That’s all you want. You would swim for suns if you had to. You can hardly remember what the ocean even sounds like anymore.

_ ”that’s weird” _

“What’s wrong?”

“i didn’t get this station earlier”

“it sounds like the ocean.”

Are your friends even looking for you? Probably not. What do you really expect them to do? Climb out of the ocean and come searching for you? Unlike you, they’re not stupid enough to leave the water so close to humans. Humans were supposed to be nice. Roxy’s nice.

“whoa”

_ ”I do believe the radio just said Roxy.” _

Stupid radio. You just said Roxy too and no one’s applauding you. They can’t even hear you. Stupid humans. The dumb machine makes a static noise that irritates you and the more annoyed you get, the worse it gets.

“john” Roxy says suddenly. You twist yourself sharply to look at her and the noise stops.

“he’s using the radio”

_ ”I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose, Dave.” _

“his thoughts must be tuned to the same frequency as the radio. i was wonderin how they communicated under the water.”

_ ”Yes. It seems likely they somehow have evolved to tune into the same frequency. It would explain why we haven’t heard a peep out of him. It’s not all that far fetched.” _

“talk to him roxy i’ll see if i can turn it in”

_ ”I don’t think that will work, Dave.” _

“john,” Roxy approaches your tank again and presses her hand to the water carefully. With a few little swishes of your fins, you approach her and promptly smack your face on the wall again. Their device screeches. You swear, it’s closer than it was last time! At least Roxy is amused by your pain.

“careful john”

You have no idea what’s happening. There’s so many odd words in the air and there’s a faint, but still irritating, sound of static distinctly different from the first. You decide to ignore all of this and just focus on Roxy. It’s easier to focus on Roxy.

okay “roxy.”

“see, it totally works negative nancy”

_ ”Mm. And you don’t find it strange at all that so far he’s only communicated words that he wouldn’t have his own for?” _

“hello john” Roxy smiles at you.

“roxy.”

_ ”I believe they haven’t a use for a spoken language, rather communicate with each other via images, sounds, and possibly the occasional symbol.” _

“well fuck”

“just hold on john,” she tells you and she’s leaving you alone again. You can still see them, gathered around the little device that they’re so interested in. At least they’re not poking and prodding at you. They tell you more stuff you don’t understand, a lot of symbols and words and undefined ideas that mean all of nothing to you.

“yo dirk!”

“see we just have ta connect this here and attach these. mm. give me your lip thing dave.”

“i’m not getting it back am i??”

“gimme gimme”

They’re all gathered around Roxy and now your curiosity is piqued. Honestly, you should be worried about humans in a mob, but it’s not like you’d be able to do anything about it, anyways. Roxy tells you she’s happy and excited, though it’s sort of blurry and makes you feel funny.

“there we go. now, let’s see if it works.”

You really wish they’d tell you something at least. You’re an intelligent creature. You can learn, honest! Unfortunately, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. They just mess with their equipment some more and tell you more stuff you can’t comprehend. Okay, you’re not _that_ smart, but come on.

“hi john,” Roxy says again. You thought ‘hi’ was some kind of greeting, but she keeps saying it at you and you don’t know anymore.

hey “roxy,” you respond and you hear all four of them mimic you creating a sort of super weird echo. Unsurprisingly, that’s actually the first time you could very clearly understand any of them. It’s too bad that’s because they’re copying you.

“Great. He thinks in colours.”

your “language” isn’t all that easy to learn either “bro,” you scoff back. Roxy tells you she is amused. Now that you know they’re perfectly capable of mimicking you, you guess they really aren’t talking to you. You’re not entirely sure what you’re listening to, then. It seems unlikely that you can hear their thoughts. Then again, you’ve never actually met a human up until now.

“i volunteer to decode it!” Roxy pips.

"i'm in"

They start arguing at each other and you stop paying attention. You have an awesome idea. So that little ‘radio’ can communicate for you. Well mostly. Mostly is all you need. This is going to be rad.

“hi roxy,” you say and sure enough, the radio speaks for you. It stops them from loudly discussing with each other at least and all their attention focuses on the device. You can hear their curiosity and they lean a little bit closer for a better listen.

So you tell them what a dying whale sounds like. Very loudly and very clearly for their scientific benefit. If anything, the radio amplifies your voice and the room is filled with the sound of a thousand dying whales. You find it absolutely hilarious how they mimic even this, making it many times worse than it could have been.

“holy shit!”

“Nnh.”

_ ”For goodness sake.” _

You chortle madly, filling your prison with bubbles and fluttering your ear fins happily. That was even better than you could have imagined. You can hear an echo of your amusement on the radio and flashes of colour on their recovering faces and it’s just great. Oh god, you’re going to go belly up!

“urg i think he blew my eardrum out”

“He is completely capable of laughter, the little shit.”

_ ”And pranking, apparently.That would have been great to know before we gave him a voice.” _

“omfg my hangover”

“you can’t be hung over if you don’t stop drinking roxy”

You float unevenly in your water as you try to stifle your chortles, but it’s really hard. You can’t believe they fell for that!

“yeah laugh it up asshole”

_ ”Turn that thing off before he does it again.” _

“don’t,” Roxy whines. “it was just a joke. he must have things to say!”

_ ”Roxy, please refrain from flirting with it.” _

“his name is john,” Roxy puffs. “and i’m not!”

“flirting?” you ponder curiously.

“if we can figure out what he’s saying, he can tell us so much more than we can find out just from running tests. plus, he’s proked that he’s intelligent, so we can teach him english. proven.”

_ ”And you still believe him after he tried to escape last night?” _

Roxy turns on Dave sharply and squares up her shoulders indignantly. He shrugs halfly. She turns back on the one with the hood.

“wanting to be free has nothing to do with his truthworth.”

_ ”It does if he’s still trapped. Roxy, he’ll say anything to get himself free, that’s a given. Even if we could communicate with him properly, we can’t be sure of anything he tells us.” _

“Hey. Cronus just pestered me. He says they’ve found another one and this one’s vicious as dicks. She’s pale, though. Might be the one you’re looking for,” Dirk interrupts. You stop being amused. Another one? Another one like you? Pale? Fuck what does that mean? Does it mean small? Is it Karkat? Please don’t let it be Karkat.

“bro it’s freaking out” Dave says, staring at the blinking screen. Roxy nudges him out of the way a little before approaching you with swift steps.

“john calm down. we’re helping you, remember? it’s okay,” she promises. Right, right. You force yourself to relax. They’re helping you by getting you away from that nasty sludge that you didn’t know was there and aren’t actually sure even exists. You calmly flutter your gills. Yes. Right.

okay “roxy.”

“They want to talk to us, Rose.”

_ ”Yes alright. If you can get anything out of him, Roxy, then fine, but at least be careful.” _

“duh,” Roxy answers. “it’ll be fine”

Rose states her disbelief and presses her black lips firmly together but doesn’t actually say anything. She and Dirk leave and Roxy shows her teeth at you. You know for a fact now that she is not being aggressive. You attempt to mimic her, but it just feels like you’re being mean to her.

“it’ll be easier if we get ya out of theer. there. wanna come out?”

You flutter yours gills. You don’t think she’s going to take you back to the pool, but anywhere but in this prison would be nice. You’ve noticed they don’t have gills, but why would they you guess? So you’re not entirely sure what kind of body movements they use in their communication. You should have listened to your Dad more. However, Roxy seems to be catching on to yours rather quickly.

“get his tank open i’m gonna get something for him to lay on” Roxy explains. Dave grunts mildly as she hurries away. You’re rather confused as to whose matesprit is whose and who’s moirails. They’re all really weird, though, so you don’t particularly care, either. Dave climbs to the top of your prison and you swim upwards to meet him. He doesn’t really talk to you. You don’t really mind.

You pop your head out of the water and shake some of the water from your face and ear fins. Dave holds a hand out at you.

“aye cut that out do you know how long it takes to get my hair like this not very long but come on”

You understand even less of what he’s saying than the others. You flicker your ears at him and attempt another human smile. It still feels aggressive to you. You don’t mind so much being aggressive towards this one, though. He takes off his eyes. Whoa, okay. You lean towards him suddenly and he leans away, having to grab onto the edge of your prison to keep from falling over. You didn’t realise he was that close. That was weird.

“you need to back up”

He has eyes like whale lenses. Which, you guess, aren’t actually his eyes. You thought they were weirdly dark for humans. Now you have to wonder if Dirk’s eyes are actually that shape and colour.

“i’ve seen you swim you probably need some wicked thick glasses”

“glasses?” you repeat.

“yeah bro like glass for your face to help you see”

“confused Dave saying,” you murmur, rolling your shoulders slightly. You’re in no hurry to understand him, either.

“you’re one to talk”

“i found some pillows!” Roxy exclaims happily. You watch her take several moments to empty her sylladex and cover the floor with weird fluffy looking rocks.

“are those dirk’s??”

“some of them.”

“well you’re dead”

Roxy motions you out of your prison. You don’t really want to jump out onto anything jagged, though. You’ve plopped yourself onto rocks from a distance before and it kind of hurts. A flat floor is one thing, but now she’s put stuff in your way.

“come on, john,” she insists happily. “nice and cushie this time so you won’t hurt yourself”

Uh, yeah okay. You scoot yourself down to the bottom of your prison and Dave quickly abandons the side. With a few little hip wriggles, you shoot yourself upwards and out of the water. You do a sweet flip. And by sweet flip you mean you accidentally hit the side of your prison with one of your fins and it sort of twists you around to land face down on the ‘pillows’. Pillows are not rocks. Wow you’re really happy about that. They’re actually really soft. You nuzzle your face against it softly. It sort of reminds you of Karkat when he’s still deflating all squishy and soft.

You sort of miss Karkat. And your dad. And Jade. And everyone, really. You’ll see them again eventually, right? You adjust yourself to sit upright better. Your eyes feel wet. Yeah, you live in the water, but you eyes don’t really get wet. You don’t think. They feel unusual.

“aw burb. bust. bail-”

“you can do it”

“baby,” Roxy says and suddenly she has hands on you. She’s hugging you. You didn’t know they hugged, either. It’s still kind of weird because her skin is weird. You’re not really sure what that texture is now but you’re starting to think it’s less of the texture and more of the warmth that bothers you. All the same, you don’t really care right now and gladly hug her back. You don’t want to let go and she doesn’t seem to mind. She just climbs into your lap, extra careful of your fins though she really doesn’t need to be, and you just hold her tightly. Dave is disappointed for some reason?

Eventually you let her go. She scratches you behind your ears and you groan in relief. However she does that, you want her to keep doing it because it is amazing. She pulls away from you and you pretend not to be bothered by her sickly dull eyes.

“it’s gonna be okay john,” Roxy promises. You feel like you can trust her.

You spend the rest of the day ‘conversing’ with her and Dave. It’s not quite conversational, but you understand that they’re trying and you’re trying. It’s particularly hard because they have so many words that don’t mean anything at all and you have so many ‘words’ that they don’t have words for. They take notes and you can’t read or write, but you understand a little bit more.

You also understand that you love pillows. Pillows are the most amazing thing to ever happen to you. And Roxy. You like Roxy. She’s nice. Maybe not all that visually appealing, but she’s pretty for a human. She’d be prettier if she was like you, honestly. Really pink and a predator magnet, but pretty.

They do have to put you back in your ‘tank’, which you think is just a fancy word for prison, but you don’t mind it so much this time. Roxy lets you keep one of the pillows and promises to give you your ridiculous modus back tomorrow. Your poor pillow pal loses some of its fluff in the water, but you don’t mind too much. It’s still nice.

It also helps you fall asleep easier. It’s not your bed, but it gives you something to hold onto while you float in your tank. Again, you don’t sleep through the night. It’s still not easy for you to remain asleep in such still water. You keep thinking you’re drowning.

_”Oh. Hello John,”_ Rose speaks to you. You watch her fiddle with your communicator. Roxy said she’d find a better name for it later.

“hey rose,” you answer sleepily. You’re not sure Rose has directly spoken to you before.

_”You’re far more intelligent that I gave you credit for,”_ she, uh, compliments you? _”Can I ask you a question?”_

“yes,” you agree with a small flicker of your gills.

_ ”You kissed Roxy, correct?” _

“yes.”

_ “Does it hurt when you change?” _

“yes.”

_ “A lot?” _

“like balls,” you promise. Rose sighs slightly, pressing a pair of fingers to her face and letting you know how annoyed she is. You’re not entirely sure why, though.

_“Remind me not to let Dave teach you anything else,”_ she says. You don’t understand. _“Do you change every time you kiss a human?”_

“no,” you tell her. Not that you’re aware of, anyways. You only really know what your dad told you and to be quite honest, you thought he was out of his mind for a long time. “water.” She smiles at you.

“Thank you, John.” And she’s completely and utterly happy.

Humans are really strange creatures.


	3. Volcano Snails

You watch them arrive from your bedroom window. Cliche, but you enjoy the view and particularly, the feeling. It rather expresses a dominant kind of feel which you think suits you. Sometimes you feel like you’re the only one trying here. Dave has absolutely no interest in the aquatic creatures and likely only stays around for Roxy. Roxy is rarely sober and even when she is, she still treats things like a joke. Dirk is apprehensive and you haven’t the least idea why. You don’t even want to begin on the trolls.

Your mother used to talk a lot about this man she rescued from the sea. She said he was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. She became obsessed with finding him again, even managing to drag her best friend, the Strider’s older brother ‘Bro’, into it with her. Then, one day they got on a boat, leaving you, your sister, and the Striders in your aunt and uncle’s care, and sailed away never to return. God, your whole life is a cliche.

Technically, there’s no proof that she, or he for that matter, are dead, but your pessimistic. You’re also optimistic. When you were younger, and foolish, you went out to find her on your own like any teenager would and unsurprisingly, things went terribly. It was your worst, and best idea, for you were saved by the very thing your mother was obsessed with. Subsequently, you also became obsessed. You suppose obsession runs in the family in more ways than one.

Fortunately for you, there’s nothing better than killing two birds with one stone. These creatures can help you find your mother if she is, in fact, still alive, and you can find the lovely thing that rescued you. Not for romantic reasons, obviously, but to keep as a sort of trophy. These things are bloody cash cows. Though you’ll be keeping yours for your own private study.

You watch calmly as Equius and his brother Horuss lift the wet lump of tightly wrapped material. It’s sedated, of course, but they’re very large creatures and if one were to wake up in any sort of machine there’s no telling what would happen. The Zahhaks assure that nothing will go wrong no matter how much it squirms. This will be the second one within the week. You’re quite pleased with yourself, really. There’s obviously some sort of living arrangement of them in the same area you found John. According to Cronus, he wounded another one while trying to get this one into the boat.

There are enough to confirm that, in fact, they live nearby. It’s only a matter of waiting for them to come to the surface. They live much too far down to actually seek them out with any currently existing equipment, though Dirk is certainly working on it. How anything can survive at such a pressure is absolutely amazing in itself. Even the seadwelling trolls can’t live at such depths.

You head downstairs to meet with Feferi and the creature they brought back with them. Roxy’s talking to John again. While you’re glad she’s finally putting work on something, you can’t quite say you like her getting attached to one of them. Dirk’s already voiced his displeasure for the situation and if Roxy turns out to want out, it will be three against one. You have no idea how many of the trolls will stand with you.

“I don’t believe this is pale, Feferi,” you comment, stopping the Zahhaks momentarily to peer into the burlap. Feferi pips up immediately, turning to face you with fluttering ear fins.

“O)(! S)(e glows! I know! It surprised me, too! S)(e stopped w)(en we sedated )(er!” she informs you gladly. You wave the Zahhaks to continue on.

“What happened to your arm?” you move on. You’ll discover more about the creature later and any information that can be obtained first hand, will. Feferi looks at the bandages on her lower right forearm momentarily before beginning to unwind them to show you the marks.

“It bit me!” she says. You take a hold of her elbow to raise her arm a little closer. There’s several sets of deep gouges in her grey skin, but the area is surprisingly void of any blood. The markings are unique to each creature, as you’ve already seen with John. “I t)(ink s)(e mig)(t )(ave sucked some blood out, too! It was really weird, actually.”

“Why do you keep calling it as she?” You let go of her arm and she wraps it up again.

“Dunno. It just seems like a s)(e to me. I was t)(inking about it, thoug)(, and t)(is one and t)(e one Cronus injured bot)( )(ad )(orns, but the first one didn’t. Is it possible t)(ey )(ave trolls and )(umans, too?”

“It seems likely, yes. Considering their colours, I doubt they evolved from the sea life, meaning it’s far more likely they evolved from us, or vise versa.”

“You mean we could )(ave evolved from t)(em?”

“Possibly. Or we may simply stem from the same previous ancestors. There’s no way of telling just yet.”

“Wow,” she says and for a moment almost appears to be awestruck by her own thoughts. You clear your throat to get her attention again.

“Have Meenah and Eridan left yet?”

“A)(, nope! Dirk said )(e was going to tag along wit)( t)(em, so t)(ey’re not leaving until tomorrow!”

_Dirk._

“Thank you, Feferi. You should go home and get some rest now. Make sure you take care of your arm,” you remind her. She smiles at you before heading on her own way. You follow the hall down to the room where they have taken your possible savoir. The Zahhaks come out before you get there.

“Is everything alright?” you ask calmly. Equius nods nervously. He’s a very nervous guy, however, so you don’t take too much mind to it.

“Certainly!” Horuss assures you. “We’ve placed it in the water and set up the barriers as specified. It won’t be escaping any time soon.”

“Excellent. I believe your assistance has been requested else where, now?” You’d like to be alone with it. They both nod briefly before leaving you to your own devices. You wait a moment before entering. You take only two steps into the room when your foot comes down with a ‘crunch’. You step back to view it. It is a fish. A fish, literally, made of only its outer scaled skin and bone. You can safely guess it’s awake, then.

Several more dead things lay scattered around the floor from where they’d been tossed out, all with the same properties as the first. Well that’s terrifying and unpleasant. You guess filling the pool with those naturally found in the location’s habitat wasn’t that good of an idea, after all. You spot the apparently hungry creature sitting at the edge of the water, propped up pompously with its fangs in another unfortunate fish.

While its horns are the same, and even the symbol haphazardly laid in scales on its chest is very similar, this is not the creature that you were looking for. You’re getting closer, though, and you can be relieved for that. This one is likely related to the one that saved you. You need to find out what their lifespans are like.

“Hello,” you greet it and its sharp yellow eyes focus on you immediately, pupils wide in the light that comes down from the sunroof. You have reason to believe that they don’t see very well in the light. It, likely a she by the chest shape, dives back into the water and approaches you rapidly. They don’t understand how glass works, but this one doesn’t ram herself into the unbreakable wall like John has multiple times. It’s more intelligent, obviously. Instead, she just pokes her head out of the water and stares at you.

“How is your language?”

“Acceptable” she answers with deliberate and thoughtful slowness.

“Excellent. Do you know what I am?”

“Human,” she says. You did already know they were intelligent and you’re particularly glad you now have proof of this.

“Correct-”

“Monsters. Thief, Disgusting, Ugly” she continues on. You purse your lips together sharply, but amuse her. You’ll have to later figure out why she is more informed than John is.

“Are you finished?” you insist calmly.

“Dirty, Miserable, Unintelligent” she lists on before pausing and blinking each eye individually. “Done”

“Your english vocabulary is quite expansive,” you compliment her.

“Thank” She is unamused by you.

“Do you know why we’ve brought you here?”

“Thief” she repeats.

“There’s been a natural disaster near where you live. The other animals are already showing ill effects from it,” you explain to her. She doesn’t answer immediately, still staring at you with wearing caution and mistrust.

“Lie” she finally answers.

“You may believe that, certainly.” You smile at her, careful not to show any teeth. She sinks lower in the water, her gills shut firmly, breathing only through her nose. “I’m really sorry, but we are doing our best to help you.”

She sinks down lower, her tail curling against the bottom of the floor. Carefully, she shakes her hips to each side, preparing to launch herself out of her tank. You cross your arms, adjusting your weight to one side to watch.

“I wouldn’t do that,” you warn. She doesn’t listen to you. With a burst of power, she launches herself upward out of the water and attempts to flip herself over the wall. She would make it too, if you don’t take out your needles and flick her back into her tank. She falls back with exactly as much force as you wanted and hits the water hard.

“Don’t be mistaken,” you assure her. “You are perfectly free to leave whenever you’d like, though I am curious as to where you think you would go and furthermore, how you would get there. In fact, you’re absolutely free to do just about anything you want except any of my team, anymore than you already have, John, myself, or yourself. If you disagree, we’ll just have to stick you in a holding tank until you’re more agreeable. Personally I think it’s quite fair.” You watch as she has to take a moment to right herself in the water, darting away a bit before slowly slinking back. It’s incredible to watch her move.

“Lie” she says again. “You Lie”

“I am not lying. I’m not even trying to trick you. I am, after all, legitimately curious about you and what you’re capable of.” Besides, you wouldn’t need to lie to her. You’d simply stick her in a tank with some drugs if you were that intent on making her agreeable. Though it takes some effort, you believe you keep any negative thoughts that she may or may not be able to sense out of your head.

“Where Is Heir” she changes the subject. You’re relatively sure that she’s not going to injure anyone else. She likely only bit Feferi out of surprise and panic. You could be wrong, of course, but you’re absolutely positive that she isn’t going to make it very far out of her dish you’ve painstakingly prepared. Everyone already knows not to get too close to these things. Whether they comply with that or not is entirely up to them. Roxy will learn her lesson eventually.

“Air?” you repeat. “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“You Have Heir Where Is Heir” she demands again, getting a little more agitated. Reluctantly you have to admit, you honestly have no idea what she wants. “Heir” she repeats slower than before.Their comprehension of physical emotion and understanding is incredible. She calms herself down so you take note of her ‘gills’ relaxing and her ear ‘fins’ going limp. You actually aren’t even sure if they can hear as opposed to somehow receiving, understanding, and ultimately mimicking either frequency, vibrations, or essentially anything else considering how much you know about them.

She approaches the glass again but this time she tilts her head forward to gouge the surface with one of her horns. This you could have done without. The noise itself is horrifying. Still though, she brings forth her point. She draws a surprisingly accurate outline of John.

“John,” you say just to see if she is capable of recognizing the connection. She is not. You get a questioned look in reply. “God is gracious?” you correct. She touches her finger to her nose. Also interesting. That you’ll have to look more into. “Do you call him ‘Air’?”

“Heir” she corrects.

“Heir?” you try again. She touches her nose again. Considering these words are pronounced exactly the same, you are positive it has nothing to do with how they sound. It’s been a quite informative few minutes, that’s for sure. “We have taken to calling him ‘John’. He is here and I’m sure he’d like to see you but first we have to make sure you’re not toxic.” To this there is no reply. “What shall we call you?”

“Kanaya” she tells you. You don’t believe this to be the truth.

“Kanaya it is. I am Rose.”

“I Know” she says.

“You do?” you answer. It’s likely this is also a lie. You’re curious all the same, though.

“Rose Lalonde” she speaks and she knows exactly what she’s saying. “Roxy Lalonde” Perhaps she overheard the crew speaking or maybe some of them are better at communicating ‘wirelessly’ than others. Then she says your mother’s name. Your heartbeat quickens.

== >

Roxy wakes you up in the morning. You hear her long before she comes into the room, calm and melo pops of colour that float it from the halls. It’s pretty nice to wake up to even if you didn’t sleep well again. Your pillow helped, definitely, but you can hear shouting. Through all the walls and equipment and your tank, you can hear Kanaya shouting. She’s not hurt or in pain, but she’s so angry. You’re afraid to reply, though. Roxy’s machine doesn’t seem to be able to hear Kanaya for some reason, but it can definitely hear you. You even tried not talking to it but it still repeats everything you say and it’s a bit annoying.

You don’t know what they would do if they found out you could talk to her from this distance. You don’t want them to move her away or worse. They keep saying they won’t. They won’t hurt you. They won’t keep you here. They won’t let you suffer. You believe that Roxy is trying to help you, you really do, but you don’t know about the others.

She looks different than usual and you can’t quite place your finger on it. It looks like her second outer skin doesn’t fit her properly. Humans are so weird. She comes to your tank and rests her face against it softly. You adjust yourself to come face to face with her. Roxy opens her mouth in a kind of horrifying way before speaking to you.

“let’s get chu outta there, hmm,” she says. You bristle your gills in agreement. Truthfully, anywhere but here if great by you. You hear her think some more, things that you don’t really understand, and it’s clearer than before. You’re not entirely sure why. They said it would be extremely difficult for humans to fluently learn your people’s language, but you’re not so sure about that. At any rate, you do understand them a bit better. Not much, but better than before. Roxy climbs to the top of your tank to remove the surface and you pop your head out immediately.

“mornin’ mr gills,” she greets you.

“hi roxy,” you reply.

“com’on out of there, imma get the trolley,” she tells you and you make a mild purr of agreement. You think the trolley is the four-wheeled device they move you on. That makes sense, you guess. You launch yourself out of your tank, apparently the only way to really get out of the thing, and less than elegantly plop onto the floor. Roxy shows all her teeth at you. That you still don’t understand. She holds the trolley still while you hoist yourself onto it and pull your fins up out of the way as to not have them squished under the wheels.

“where going?” you ask. It would be great to see one of your friends again, and you would absolutely adore being able to talk to Kanaya, but you don’t think they’d really let you do that.

“it’s my day off” Roxy explains.

“day off?” Is that when the moon devours the sun? You don’t think so. It’s not even close to that day surely.

“yup! don’t gotta do jack shit today” she says happily as she rolls you through the halls. You still have no idea what that means. “we’re going to play video games” Alright, you lied. You don’t understand them much more than before. You decide not to answer because you being confused about everything is kind of getting tiring. Instead, you just kind of examine your surroundings. You’ve never been down this part of the building before. There are some weird symbols on the walls, some of which you only recognize distantly and only one that you know as ‘o’. Yep, that’s definitely an o and that’s a squiggly line. More squiggly lines. That’s a picture of some strange land creature. More squiggly lines.

“here’s my room!” Roxy announces, reaching over you to open the door and gladly rolling you inside. You assume that this is where she lives. It’s completely different than where you live. You usually sleep in the bed of coral your dad mad linked together with four or five from your cluster so none of you will drift away while you sleep. Humans wouldn’t float away, you guess. You don’t think so, at least. Like you, they seem to be pretty grounded while out of the water. You watch as she gathers up some pillows and things that look like very large, flat pillows and makes a pile of them. You’re really digging these piles of pillows.

“here,” she says, grabbing your tail between her hands and lifting you up a bit. You pick yourself up on your hands to move with her a bit awkwardly until she sort of tosses you onto the pillows. You make yourself comfortable. “perfect!”

“comfortable,” you puff pleasantly. Regardless of your lack of sleep and desire to shout for Kanaya, this is kind of nice.

“good! my turn” Roxy flops beside you and yanks her outer skin over her head before tossing it aside. She sinks back in the pile right beside you, her warm thigh pressed against your scales. It’s still weird, but maybe not as bad as you originally thought. You watch her lean forward and turn the screen that looks very similar to your communicator on before going about to pushing a bunch of buttons that you have no idea what they do.

She puts an object in your hand. You have no fucking idea what this is. You don’t even have a comparison for it. Is it- is it food? Can you eat it? Roxy puts her tiny hands over yours, moving your fingers to wrap around the strange thing awkwardly. She touches the webbing between your fingers, likely by accident, and you almost fling it away. Alright, that was super weird! You had _no_ idea they were that sensitive. You don’t think anyone’s ever touched them before. It’s just kind of something that you instinctively know not to do. Roxy doesn’t seem to notice.

“alright this is the right analog stick, this is the left one. that’s the direction ped. whoops direction pad. then there’s the buttons, circle, square, x, and triangle. l one, l two, r one, r two, and select and start” Roxy explains. You stare stupidly. Wow you didn’t understand any of that even slightly. You consider telling her this, but she’s pretty happy about it so you pretend you understand and flutter your gills.

“skate 3 here we come” She punctuates this by ripping a cork out of a bottle that she pulled from her sylladex. She takes a drink of it before pointing the bottle at you. “want some?” That would probably be a pretty bad idea. However, your curiosity gets the best of you and you agree vocally.

“sure.” Roxy gladly lifts herself up a bit to help you take a drink. It takes bitter on your pallet and you retch immediately. Your gills do the rest of the work, filtering out basically everything you drank in as toxic. She laughs at you.

“well no more of that for you,” she giggles. You’re actually pretty embarrassed.

“gross human thing,” you scoff in return.

“peh. you wish. this is the best you have no idea. you just bled forty bucks out your neck.”

“humans weird.”

“no way. you’re weird.”

“nu uh.”

“yeah huh”

“nu uh.” Roxy starts hitting buttons and you mimic her, though you have no idea what they do. You guess this is pretty fun. It’s mostly fun because Roxy’s having run you think. You really don’t like being alone. In fact, you don’t think you’ve ever been alone in your entire life. Most of your kind haven’t. Karkat being the odd one there, of course. You still have no idea why he tries to isolate himself. You miss him a lot. You miss everyone a lot.

You hear Dave in the hall and a few seconds later he lets himself into the room.

“hey rox-”

Roxy stiffens all at once. Their relationship continues to baffle you entirely. Dave seems to consider himself Roxy’s matesprit, but Roxy thinks herself Dirk’s matesprit and Dirk is pretty firmly attached to the idea that he’s Roxy’s morial? Really, it’s just all around confusing for you. Nothing like that ever happens back at home. You’ve never had a matesprit because it just hasn’t happened for you, but you knew your morial immediately and haven’t parted since. She’s probably worried about you.

“i can explain,” Roxy says quickly.

“are you playing skate without me??”

“no! sort of”

“move over let me show you how it’s done” Dave sits beside you and gestures to the item in your hand which you more than gladly hand over. “watch a pro now john”

“pro loser,” Roxy teases. You chortle.

== >

I think we should go up there and get them 8ack. Well, Kanaya 8ack at least.

i think that is a pretty stupid idea.

IT’S A REALLY STUPID FUCKING IDEA.

WH4T WOULD W3 3V3N DO ON L4ND?

I don’t see any of you coming up with any 8rilliant ideas, Vriska scoffs. She’s right, though. The grandparents did tell you to stay away from the humans, but obviously you’re not about to do that. You have to go get John back!

i mean i guess we could but where would we even find human saliva?? Jade murmurs, ripping another clam wide open.

THAT’S JUST A STUPID FUCKING MYTH.

1T’S TOT4LLY NOT. D4D 3GB3RT S41D 1T WORK3D FOR HIM.

DAD EGBERT HAS FUCKING SUN DAMAGE.

hey! Jade yips at you.

I heard the Handmaid sells some. That’s what happened to Sollux, Vriska informs matter-of-factly.

NO W4Y. 4R4D14 WOULD H4V3 N3V3R L3T H1M DO TH4T, Terezi insists sharply.

i dunno. i heard he fell in love with someone from the surface, Jade agrees.

SOLLUX AND ARADIA WERE FUCKING LIFE TIME MATESPRITES, you assure them. You knew Sollux pretty well and you never heard him say anything about a human.

i think we should give it a try, Jade finally admits. it is just not right to do nothing to help them. we have to try at least.

Exactly, Vriska says smoothly. Jade gets it.

3V3N 1F W3 DO F1ND TH3M, WH4T 4R3 W3 GO1ING TO DO?

YOU ARE ALL SUCH FUCKING STUPID SHARK BAIT.

Whoa whoa whoa. One step at a time. First we need the goods from the Handmaid. Luckily, I have some of her a8solutely favor8 goods. Vriska pulls a jar from her sylladex and displays it gladly among your shared lunch. Are those-? Oh Sufferer help you.

volcano snails? Jade questions. are you sure you should have those?

Well if no8ody, Vriska rolls her eyes to Terezi. Tells anyone, we’ll 8e fiiiiiiiine.


	4. Time of Dying

“okay he’s drunk”

“no way,” you answer and you don’t look away from the tv screen because that’s exactly what Dave wants you to do. You’re not falling for that.

“roxy look at him he’s drunk as fuck” Dave insists again, putting his controller down all together. You glance at your new big fishie friend. John’s drooping a little with the world’s stupidest grin on his buck toothed face, but that doesn’t mean he’s drunk.

“no way,” you repeat. “he’s fine he had like one drink. and most ‘a it came out his neck.”

“dude i don’t care how much he drank, he’s fucking drunk”

“i negative drunk!” John shouts. “you drink.”

“okay he might be drunk,” you admit. John hiccups and causes himself to giggle stupidly. Wow he’s adorable.

“fuck what do we do??” Dave quickly reached over to roll John onto his side, but the merman becomes wiggly immediately, swinging himself over and accidentally smacking Dave full on with his tail. His ‘ironic’ shades go flying across the room and he’s immediately disoriented. “jesus christ!”

“watch out” you say after the fact, just to tease him. Dave shoots you an unamused look. “what? so he’s a little drunk. he’ll be fun i mean fine. also bun. fun.”

“if he doesn’t die” Dave assures you. John slides the aviators onto his face and launches himself upright.

“look rox. i human. bro bro bro. exceedingly chilly. please mate me roxy. bro bro bro,” he says, gills going absolutely wild down his neck. You can’t help but laugh. Dave has to climb over John, the water bound human being nearly twice his size, to reclaim his shades.

“he’ll be fine,” you promise again.

“how do you know you didn’t give it alcohol poisoning? for all we know it fucking filters everything but the toxic parts out we have no idea how its body works”

“man, dave, you were so totally chill a few minutes ago” you scoff, tossing your controller aside. “now he’s an ‘it’ again? what crawled betwix your cheeks??”

“yo whatever i’m out i’m not getting blamed for this”

“rox plus dave swimmin sea. squiggly line, squiggly line, bro, squiggly line. one matesprites, two fry, three grub wrapped sea weed sky,” John sings off key in a tune that is extremely familiar to you.

“com’on dave,” you call after him. “don’t tell rose again”

“i didn’t tell her the first time” he assures you. This doesn’t really surprise you. You just kind of blame it on Dave because he and Rose are so buddy buddy all the time. You’re pretty sure he knows you don’t really mean it.

“just help me get him back in the tank, yeah? i’ll never give ‘im alcohol ever a gain. cross my heart,” you promise, swishing your index finger over your chest.

“other side” he replies. You’re drunk, alright? Honest mistake. You make a cross over both sides of your chest with the appropriate fingers.

“cross my lungs” you correct. Dave glances toward John with his ever as unmoved facial features before looking back to you.

“there’s no way were gonna get him back in that tank” he says. He’s right. Your new merman friend has suddenly decided to become your new unconscious merman friend. Oh jeez. There’s not way you could move him now, let alone Dave. You’d have to get Equius or Horuss to come help you and unlike Dave, they’d rat you out in a heartbeat. Well not so much a heartbeat as a sharp look from Rose.

“fuck” You grab John’s arms in an attempt to pull him into a sitting position. He’s way heavier as dead weight, that’s for sure. “john baby you can’t go to sleep like this come on” you insist. He is unresponsive. Oh well. “we can’t leave him on the floor. help me move him.”

“move him where?” Dave asks pointedly.

“he can sleep with me fer tonight,” you answer. Dave stares at you. “don’t give me that look. a; he’s drunk and two; look at him! he’s smooth as a ken doll. just help me”

“fine whatever you grab his arms i’m not about to have him throw up on me” he scoffs. You get a decent grasp on John’s chest area and Dave hoists his tail up and the two of you manage to sort of drag the creature toward your bed. Getting him onto the bed is another story. You manage, though, making sure to prop John up on his side so he won’t choke himself during the night. He doesn’t really fit completely, his fins sort of dangling off and a good chunk of his tail is laying on the floor at the foot of your bed.

“you gonna be alright?” Dave questions calmly. You plop down on your bed beside John. You’re actually pretty tired as well and your bed is super comfortable.

“we’ll be fiine,” you assure him with an ugly yawn. “i mean he’ll probs roll over and squash me during the night but whatevs.”

“i’ll come make sure you’re aliving in the morning”  


“peh.” You’re half asleep by the time Dave leaves, but you’re incredibly uncomfortable. This is easily solved by pressing a pillow against John’s back and then pressing your back against said pillow. It’s like having a giant, cool wall in your bed, which is absolutely amazing. This is just the best, hands down. You will sleep great tonight.

== >

“Yo, I need a favor.”

“kiind of bu2y riight now,” he answers. You toss your file on his desk and lean against it leisurely.

“You look like all you were doing was staring at that empty tank,” you respond pointedly, turning your sites upward to examine the curve of said tank. You have your suspicions as to why Sollux has a fondness for working around an empty tank like this, but you keep them to yourself. He’s a decent enough guy.

“you 2ee my poiint,” he agrees sarcastically.

“I’m taking Condescension out tomorrow,” you tell him. That gets his attention. He peers at you over his glasses.

“are you 2eriiou2?” he says much more sharply than you expected. You raise a brow at him. “dude, you do realii2e what wiill happen iif 2omethiing goe2 wrong, riight?”

“I am. She’s been on the bench for for years now. I think it’s ready to take out,” you assure him.

“two year2. iit’2 been on the bench for two year2.”

“I thought you’d cream yourself over that,” you not. Sollux is unamused. “Look, I really didn’t come to ask if you think I should or not. I’m going to regardless. I would, however, like another pair of eyes to look over this to minimize the possibility of something going wrong.”

“you would 2eriiou2ly rii2k your liife for thii2?” he insists.

“Meenah and Eridan will be there. Worse case scenario the fail-safe backfires,” you explain. He already knows this, of course, having worked on it with you for quite a while now.

“no,” he replies. “wor2e ca2e 2cenariio; you diie.”

“Alright, well if you’re not going to help me, I’ll have Roxy look it over for me again,” you finally say. Sollux stares at you sharply and you see him clench his teeth together. He closes his eyes for a moment and presses his thumb against the plate of his false teeth.

“fiine,” he scoffs. “your funeral.”

It’s clear Sollux doesn’t want you to go. Whether this is actually because of the safety of the Condescension is unclear. He’s always seems a bit unwilling to put forth any effort into the project. Not to the point of preventing progress thus you never thought much of it.

Perhaps he needs some more looking into. You’ll mention it to Rose and Dave.

== >

“Roxy,” you hear your sister’s voice and you immediately jerk your head up. You try to cover John with your blanket, as if it will hide the massive aquatic human in your bed. John makes a displeasures noise. You literally fail at hiding the creature even a little bit.

“mhm?” you tiredly reply, going ahead and deciding to pretend like there is nothing unusual about it. Rose doesn’t make any particular note about John.

“I need you to go with Dirk,” she says. You groan.

“what? no,” you murmur in reply. “why do i need to go?”

“I don’t want Dirk out there by himself. If anything goes wrong, I need you there to make sure everyone comes home safely,” she tells you. You’re pretty sure she’s doing it only to spite you, though. Everyone knows you get wicked sea sick when you’ve been drinking and everyone knows you like to drink on your day off. She probably just wants you away from John, anyways. “I need you to get John back in his tank and get ready to leave immediately.”

“isn’t meenah going with him?” you insist.

“Meenah does not know the schematics of the Condescension let alone what to do if Dirk gets stuck down there.”

“wat about horuss? or equius? or basically any1 else,” you groan. You really don’t want to go. Not even a little bit. Besides, that means John will be here all alone and you don’t want to do that to him, either.

“Roxy,” Rose says firmly. “I expect you to be ready by noon.” With that, she leaves your room and you flop back down on your bed. John pushes the blanket off his face.

“i think she saw me,” he murmurs.

“nah” you answer. You sit up a little more, hoisting yourself into a better sitting position and shake your hair out. You are not looking forward to being on a boat this afternoon. Oh man, you’re gonna die. “how you feelin’, john?”

“feel,” he says slowly. “face hurt.”

“geah. i feel you, buddy,” you assure him, climbing out of your bed. You shrug into a shirt and push your hair back out of your face. It’s an absolute mess and being on the boat is just going to make it worse. Maybe you can have Meenah give you a hand with that. Curse your naturally untame hair.

“you leaving?” John asks softly.

“ah yup but only fer a little while,” you promise. “a week at the most.”

“week?” he questions.

“like seven suns,” you assure him. You have to remember that the way they keep track of their time is kind of bizarre. Brush in hand, you flop yourself back into your bed along side him and comb his hair. John bristles his gills and his little ear fins flutter out before collapsing behind his ears. It’s interesting that he even has ears, though upon close inspection they don’t seem to function as ears if the thin layer of skin sealing the inside accounts for anything. You touch the curve of his ear and he yanks his head away suddenly, giving you a puzzled look.

“not touch,” he says, cupping his ears with his hands in a way that you find largely adorable. “not yours.”

“alright alright. touchy,” you scoff, sticking your tongue out at him. He responds by sticking his tongue out. You grab his head around the forehead, pulling him back down to your height. “lemme finish brushing your hair. you’re gonna get it tangled if you get back in the water like this”

“hair long,” John murmurs back. “friend shorten.”

“you have a friend that cuts your hair?” That’s kind of interesting. You’re not sure if it’s visual appeal, though. You’re fairly certain that they do groom themselves to look a certain way, though. Some of John’s scales have colours that you think are artificially added. You hope that once you get John settled in his tank, you’ll be able to watch him in a more natural habitat.

“sylph,” he says. You’re not entirely sure what that means. “sylph, maid, dolorosa,” he says and pats the top of his sternum with a few fingers. “home.”

“aw, john,” you murmurs softly, wrapping your arms around his waist and pressing your face into his rough, scaly back. “i’m sorry.”

“sylph,” he repeats, grabbing one of your wrist. “here. please see sylph please.”

“john,” you say quickly, trying to free your hand from his grip.

“please see sylph roxy. sylph here. i hear her. please roxy,” he begs, taking a tighter grip on you. You quickly press your free hand to his elbow, grabbing some support but not yet wanting to physically force him off.

“you have to let go of my wrist john,” you demand firmly.

“please,” he says again. “please roxy, please.” He does not let you go. Regrettably, you have to twist his arm for him to finally let you go. When he does, he promptly gives up, slowly leaning forward until his face is pressed submissively against the bed.

“i’m sorry, john,” you say softly, petting the back of his head. He doesn’t answer. Oh man you’re the worst person in the world. “you have to go back in your tank,” you tell him quietly. John doesn’t reply immediately, but he eventually nods mildly.

“okay roxy.”

He’s breaking your goddamn heart.

== >

You need four jelly fish, two smooth stones, one piece of driftwood, a silver bubble would be great but not necessary, eight jars of sand, and twenty two fish of palm size or smaller. This is going to be great. It won’t bring back John or Kanaya, sure, but hopefully it will cheer up Jane and maybe even everyone else, too. You’re pretty sure John is going to come back. If the humans really did get him, they’re likely let him go soon. The GHB himself said that they were harmless and he’s never lead your cluster astray before. Not with Grandma taking care of him, anyways.

Besides, Dad Egbert swears that the humans are great. They probably just wanted to ask him some questions or something. You’d love to ask a human some questions but they tend to do a lot of dying when brought under the water. So much dying in fact that your cluster’s main defense against the humans if they ever decide to attack is just stay under the water. It’s a pretty solid plan if you do say so yourself.

Again, though, you don’t think the humans are as dangerous as everyone is assuming they are. They seems perfectly nice, really. At least, that’s what you thought until you came face to face with one. Let’s be honest, now, you never thought you’d meet a human this far beneath the surface. You don’t think the human expected to meet you, either.

Actually, it was less meeting and more of you swimming face first at top speed into a hard surface. Your excuse is simple this; that had never been there before! Who expects to swim into something at this depth? It disorients you more or less immediately and you only manage not to start sinking because of your automatic fins. When you finally regain your senses, you realise you’re face to face with a human. A human in a giant silver bubble.

Your first reaction is to swim away! Swim away quickly! Something grabs your tail, though, and it’s hard and firm. You thrash about wildly before realising you can’t get it off and promptly decide to play dead. Nothing happens for a while. Is it dead? Did you hurt it? You pop an eye open to look at it and you have no idea if it’s dead. What does an alive human look like?

Carefully, you push at the weird claw-like thing gripped around your tail. It’s still stuck on there pretty tightly. You twist yourself around in hopes of wiggling loose, but you only cause yourself quite a lot of discomfort. Well damn it. Are you stuck? Did you get yourself stuck? What even is this thing? You’ve never seen anything like it before. However, it has joints and little bolts and such. You reach into your pouch for some tools and begin trying to get it off of you.

“Whoa, hey there dude. Don’t do that.”

Signless flipping tunafish!

You exhale a large amount of bubbles and promptly drop one of your tools down into the abyss of the ocean. Crikey, it’s going to take you forever to find that. The human is definitely still alive, that’s for sure. You stare at it nervously. You really like being in the water and as nice as you’re sure they are would not like to go with them anywhere.

“Chill out for a minute. I almost got this tuned to your frequency.”

Is it mad? The frequency of what? Your portable underwater radio?

Could you perhaps get this off me, chap? you ask politely. You’re assuming he, or perhaps she, or maybe even they, are controlling the captivating limb. It doesn’t answer you, unfortunately. That’s a bit rude. Hello? Id really like this thing off of me.

“Yo Roxy, I’m getting some major interference down here.”

Now you really have no idea what it’s doing. You don’t think it’s talking to you at the very least. However, you’re not sure who it’s talking to, then. You don’t see or hear anyone else. Wow it would be great if thing thing would let you go.

“Got it.”

Yes. Hello. I am still here.

“Yeah dude. I see you. Give me a minute.” Oh now it pays attention to you.

You can hear me now, then?

“Sort of,” it answers. “Your frequency has some wicked static.”

That makes complete and utter sense, right-o, you assure it. Could ya relinquish me hindquarters?

“No problem,” it says and carefully the limb lets you go. You swim away a bit, checking your tail to make sure it hadn’t ripped any of your scales off before cautiously swimming around the silver bubble the human is contained in. You’re not sure what to do with this. It’s not trapped in there, surely? You mean, it is still alive which has to account for something. “Did I hurt you?”

Uh- See? It’s being extraordinarily nice to you. No chap im dandy.

“Cool. Didn’t want you swimming off before we could talk,” it assures you. You never thought you’d talk to a human. To be perfectly honest, you weren’t entirely sure they could talk. You mean, yeah, Dad Egbert had said that they do this weird thing with their mouth bits, but you hadn’t entirely believed that. That’s so weird, after all. What would something even communicate with their mouth parts?

Alright, i suppose? you agree. You will admit you’re kind of concerned it’s going to take you away like John and Kanaya, but you decide to give it the benefit of the doubt.

“You’re pretty good at this,” it compliments. You haven’t actually done anything yet, so you have no idea what he’s talking about. “Talking, I mean.”

Thank you? I think? You’re not sure how to take that, really.

“Sorry,” it says. “Do you have a name?”

Oh! Yes! Lets see, he said it was ‘supplanter’ which translates to jake, i think in human. Right? you perk curiously. You mean, you know human isn’t a language, but again, what kind of creature uses mouth bits to talk?

“Sounds right,” it agrees. “I’m Dirk.”

Nice to meet your acquaintanceship, dirk, you reply, fluttering your gills pleasantly. With a little less caution, you swim forward to press your face against the weird clear surface on Dirk’s silver bubble. You glance around the inside of it. It’s pretty small really, but it’s just full of all sort of odds and ends that you really want to get a peek at.

“What’s in your bag there?” he asks. You’d completely forgot about your scavenging trip. With this reminder, though, you float back a little and twirl your package around to rest on your belly.

Lets see, a tar jellyfish, a shiny jellyfish, a jellywish, and two flower eaters. Oh one of which sounds scrumptious actually, you note, popping it in your mouth. And some tiny fish.

“Did you just eat a box jellyfish?” Dirk deadpans immediately.

Whats a box?

“You just ate an extremely toxic jellyfish,” he assures you.

That doesnt tell me what a box is, you answer, sucking in the last little legs of your snack and filtering out a mouthful of seawater through your gills.

“Nevermind,” he says and you watch as he rubs a stick on some weird flat thing. You kind of want to know what a box is now, though.

So, you say quietly, picking a bit of sand out from between your teeth. Why are you such a hop and skip from the surface, ol chap?

“Research,” Dirk answers simply.

Oh, you reply. He doesn’t really say anything else, though. You watch him rub his little stick on his flat thing some more, every so often turning his face to look at you. He doesn’t seem to have eyes which is weird, but whatever. Can i beg your pardon for a question?

“Shoot.”

What?

“Ask me.”

Have you seen my brother or sister? you ask. He stops moving his stick for a moment. You know. Up there?

“I wouldn’t know,” he replies. “Sorry.”

I didnt think so, you assure him. There’s a big world up there. People say It goes up forever. You don’t know what you’d do if the ocean went on forever.

“Look Jake, I got to go. I can’t stay down here very long,” he explains. You didn’t think he could, no.

Oh alright. Are you- going to, recur?

“You can come up with me, if you’d like,” he says. You glance to the surface nervously and bare your teeth. “Yo, I’ll probably be back down tomorrow,” Dirk confirms. “Same place.”

And i could come talk to you some more? you ask.

“Course dude.”

Goodbye then, uhm, dirk.

“Bye Jake.”

That was interesting to say the least.

== >

You’re allowed to sit in your tank with your not so fluffy pillow pal and think about what you did for seven whole days. You shouldn’t have told Roxy you knew your friend was here. You know Kanaya’s still here, you can still sense here, but she’s not saying anything anymore. You hope that’s not your fault. You don’t want them to do anything to Kanaya because of you. You didn’t mean it. You just wanted to see your family again.

You shouldn’t have asked so much of Roxy, either. You thought maybe she’d understand but perhaps you forgot that she is one of the people keeping you here. For your own good supposedly, but then why can’t you see your sister? If she had given you a reason, you would have felt momentarily better about this situation, but she didn’t. She just hurt you. A tiny little human hurt you.

You weren’t entirely convinced to begin with that they were doing this for your own good. Not that there’s anything you can do about it, either way. You’re a big fish in the middle of a lot of land. Still though, you want to believe that Roxy is helping you in the long run. You probably just surprised her, is all. After all, she is quite a bit smaller than you and humans are really fragile. You thought, at least, until she dislocated your shoulder. She didn’t notice, obviously, and your shoulder is technically allowed to do that, but you didn’t think a human could do that.

Basically, you just did a really bad dumb. You are really dumb. You wish you weren’t so dumb.

“ii have two feed you whiile roxy’2 gone.”

Your dumb is overridden by surprise. Fish food!

chiill out before you giive me away. “you’re not goiing to biite me or 2omethiing, riight?”

sollux? You don’t understand how this is even slightly possible. You thought Sollux got eaten by a shark! Even if he hadn’t, which he obviously has not, how is he walking around like nothing’s wrong? He removes the lid of your tank carefully and empties a bucket of fresh food into your tank. This is more food than they usually give you, but you can’t be surprised because Sollux‽

“Sollux,” Rose calls from the doorway making your skin jump all at once. “Could you come help me with something.”

“yeah,” he replies as he places the surface of your tank. don’t worry, he assures you as he leaves. you’re 2afe. be patiient.


	5. Club Soda

“he does look an awful lot like john,” Roxy agrees more or less absently. She’s wicked sea sick. You’d feel bad for her, but you really wish she’d stop drinking at this point. However, she is an adult and can make her own choices so you will continue to not mention it. “they brothers or what?” 

“I don’t know yet,” you answer. “I don’t know what their family structures are like.” 

“oh man too bad i can’t ask john because i’m too busy vomiting my guts out all over the deck,” she replies. You glance toward her slightly. To be honest, you don’t think Roxy is going to stick to the plan.

“You really like him,” you note. She scoffs.

“have you seen him he’s like the most adorable thing in existence,” she reminds you.

“Yeah,” you reply. “I know.” She is most definitely an adult. Sort of. There’s silence for a moment as Roxy leans herself on your back. She backs up suddenly, though.

“whoa whoa wait. are you saying you have a crush on john?” she asks.

“Roxy-”

“because every time we have a crush on the same guy, he turns out to be gay. or related to me. not that you had a crush on dave. i don’t think-” 

“Roxy,” you repeat. “He’s not even the same species.” 

“neither are trolls but you don’t hava problem bangin them”

“Could we stay on topic here?” you answer blandly. She sighs against the back of your head.

“i mean,” she says, pausing for a moment lazily. “sorta i guess. not like dating like but like ‘you are super interesting and i would like to write a nobel prize winning thesis on you’ like. not that i only like him to further my own needs but like that fact that he could even single handedly be the reason for my advancement is pret wow. like, i dunno, he’s interesting in the kind of way that i want to dissect him but i like him in the kind of way that i don’t actually want to hurt him obv.” 

Roxy, you believe, falls in love the same way she works. Either not at all, aggressively refusing to put effort into anything she has no interest in, or head in cock out. This is something you’re not going to concern yourself with. She will, ultimately, run her own way out. Your silence ends the conversation at hand.

“so what do we do with him?” Roxy asks curiously. You peer over Jake, the odd aquatic creature unconscious on the desk of the ship. You had to drug him up something fierce to get him up here. There’s no way he’d even remember his name with this much in his system.

“We’ll get a USTD in him and drop him back in the water. That’ll give us a better location of their living area. We might as well get some photos while we can,” you assure her.

“i’ll get the xrayer” Roxy informs, shoving herself off your back and immediately losing her balance. You watch her carefully as she appears to immediately be overcome by her fish lunch before running off to uneat it.

You feel a little bad for her.

== >

“hey john come on bro” 

You adjust yourself enough to peer at Dave. He usually doesn’t talk to you unless he absolutely has to or Roxy’s around. You’re hoping it’s the second. It hasn’t been seven days, you don’t think at least, but you can hope.

”how you doin there john??” he asks. You’ve certainly had better suns, that for certain. Better moons, too. Better everything, really. You don’t really bother with this reply, obviously, only blinking one eye slowly and then the other. ”you’re a weird dude”

You are largely unamused by him today. Not that you were ever particularly amused by him. He’s one of the weirder aliens who is neither mean nor nice to you. This suits you both just fine so far.

”your new tank’s ready so we’re going to be moving you today” he informs you. This makes you a little nervous, however. You sort of know what a tank is and you’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t like them. This one is already pretty small and you have no desire to be moved into one any smaller than this.

”roxy?” you ask questioningly. You’d feel better if Roxy was here at least. She usually tries not to hurt you intentionally you don’t think. 

”nah dude she’s going to be gone for a while longer just you and me and rose today” he says. This makes you even more nervous. You don’t think Rose likes you very much. You’re not entirely sure because she never says anything to you. She talks to you with her mouth parts but unlike everyone else, she doesn’t speak to you properly. Of course, then again you’re still not entirely sure what you’re hearing so it’s possible that maybe you just can’t hear her? That makes it worse, actually.

”wait roxy?” you ask quietly.

”chill bro it’ll be quick we’re going to get you out of there equius is going to carry you upstairs and it’s right back into the water no problem” he assures you. You really don’t want to do this. You glance up as the top of your tank is removed and slowly slide back into the water until you're submerged again. ”imma need you to hop out of there”

You shake your head, snapping your gills shut all at once. As much as you don’t really like it in here, you’re familiar with it and change seems super scary right now. You’d much rather just stay here. Either stay here or go home. Going home never seems to be an option, though.

”are you serious right now?” Dave sighs. ”please get out?”

You’re not going anywhere. You’re pretty comfortable right here with your pillow pal thanks.

”christ,” he mumbles. ”get the halter! he’s not coming out and cronus”

This sounds like something you definitely don’t want to be a part of. You proceed to not be a part of this by pulling the skin off your pillow pal and pulling it over your head. The perfect hiding spot. No one will ever find you here.

“uh you sure i can go in there? the other one bit fef wwicked hard.”

”you’d be the first”

”you said that about the electrotherapy too.”

”look man you gonna get in there or not?”

Your tank is way too small for one of the weird two tailed creatures to fit into it with you. This certainly doesn’t stop it, though. It gouges you in the head with its horns as it leans heavily into your tank. You continue not to move. You’re pretty sure he can’t see you. Yep. Perfectly hidden. You are a pillow pal. The two tailed thing wraps this weird sort of heavy duty seaweed around your chest and hips before leaving your tank. There is no part of this that could possibly be good.

”easy right? help equius get him out of there don’t drop him don’t scratch him don’t pick at him don’t try to talk to him don’t touch his fins don’t touch his face actually you know what don’t touch him at all let equius do all the handling you just mop up the water on the floor”

”sure thing chief.”

”you know what just go stand over there”

Humans are so weird. Humans and whatever the other things are. Weird horned humans. You don’t know why humans need horns. Not that you spend very long dwelling on this. You’re suddenly weightless and then dead weight. You continue to not understand how these humans can handle you in such a way. You’re much bigger than them not to mention you can easily take on sharks so you’re pretty sure humans shouldn’t be able to lift you out of this tank.

But no. This two tailed beast hoists you up like you weigh nothing and carries you away. Your pillow pal’s skin keeps your face wet which does absolutely nothing to help you. So this is a thing that is happening to you right now. You kind of wish this wasn’t happening. To be fair, most of the humans around here are pretty nice to you. The one that carries you across the building is careful enough to slowly lower you back into the water.

”Did I injure you” he asks carefully. You pull the pillow skin off your head, glancing around slightly. Fortunately your new tank is not smaller than your old one. In fact, it’s much, much larger. It’s kind of nice, actually.

”no,” you answer. He nods at you with a show of teeth that’s missing some of said teeth. A lot of teeth, actually. Well this is weird. You’re actually not sure if this is threatening or not. You didn’t know humans lost teeth? That’s really weird. Why would a creature loose bones? Aren’t they supposed to be attached to something?

”Equius, be on your way.”

”Ah yes”

Unlike your old tank, this one hangs from the floor as well as rests on it. Perhaps there’s a word for a hovering floor? You think it probably starts with a c. Surface, yes, that’s it. This makes it easy for the humans to peer into this tank unlike the other. Rose continues to make you extremely nervous. She climbs down into your tank using the two tailed climbing device and stands on the rocky ledge that protrudes from that corner. You retreat to the other side of the tank.

”Come here, John,” she beckons you calmly. You wisely don’t do this. She tosses out your skinless pillow pal as what is likely a friendly gesture. This is likely a lie but you would like you pillow pal back so you carefully swim over. Sure enough, this is a trap and as soon as you get close, Rose grab you around the neck and shoves you against the rock. For the love of Signless, these humans are really strong!

”I will tell you this once, so do your best to listen,” she says and digs her extremely evil nails into your gills. You don’t move. There’s no strategy behind this because you could very easily drag her under the water if you wanted to, but that seems like something you would regret doing. Again, too, you don’t actually want to hurt them, either. ”If you hurt Roxy, your stay here will become far more unpleasant. Do not aggressively put your hands on her again.”

You understand. You definitely understand. You tell her that you understand and that you’re really sorry and you didn’t mean it. This only furthers the idea that humans are really scary. You have no idea what your dad was talking about when he told you about the humans but it was not this. She let’s you go and you immediately dart off with your pillow pal as far away as possible. Your gills feel all gross and bitter now.

Rose doesn’t say anything else to you. She leaves quietly and you wait patiently to make sure she’s gone before exploring your new tank. It’s much bigger than your old one and there’s actually stuff in this one. You roll around the sand that lines the bottom happily, getting the little grains under your scales and buffing your outer coating. This is already nicer than the other prison.

Only now, it’s lonely. You’ll never win that battle, though. You’ll be happy with what you have because apparently it can be worse. Wow it would be great if it didn’t get worse. You nibble on a bit of vegetation growing out from sandy floor as you try to wriggle out of this weird halter thing they’ve left you in.

Today could have been worse, you guess.

== >

“Roxy wait,” Dirk calls after you. You don’t do this obviously. Why would you do that? You want to see John. You ended up being away a day longer than you wanted to and now you want to make sure John is okay. Dave can barely take care of a cactus.

”meenah will help you!” you reply, hurrying down the dock and taking the shortcut up to your bedroom window. You have to pass by Rose’s office to get up there and you’re positive she’s chuckling at you. The quickest way into the building is up and that’s the way you go. You slip into your bedroom and immediately strip down from your dirty, sea water drenched clothes. You fight with your dresser and your hairbrush as you try to primp yourself.

You pop out of your room ready for not being on a boat for eight days. A quick brush of your hands gets rid of the wrinkles in your skirt and you head down the hall happily. Unfortunately, John’s room is surprisingly empty. Nepeta blinks at you curiously.

”something wrong?” she asks.

”where’s jihm?” you insist. ”john”

”they moved him into the observation” she informs you gladly. The observation wasn’t done when you left!

”wat?” you sigh disappointedly. You wanted to be here to move John. ”really?” Nepeta nods.

”rose n33ded the tank fur something else” Nepeta tells you. You’re not sure why Rose would move the tank, but you’re kind of annoyed that whatever it was couldn’t wait.

”thanks peta,” you murmur. You pause for a moment, thought. ”what are you doin in here anyways?”

”oh! equius said he dropped something in here the other day and couldn’t find it so i’m looking fur it” she explains. You mouth a simple ‘o’ before hurrying off to see John. You catch him perched up on the rocky ledge with a piece of coral in his hand, buffing himself furiously.

”john!”

John yelps. He throws the piece of coral away from himself and looks up to you suddenly, blinking luminescent eyes widely.

”roxy!” he answers gladly. ”roxy i am sorry,” he says before you can say anything else. ”please not mad.” Quickly, you sprint along the edge of the tank and slide down the ladder to join him. You grab his face in your hands firmly and his face scrunches up automatically.

”i will never be mad at u john,” you assure him. You weren’t mad before and you definitely aren’t mad now. If anything, John should be the one mad at you. Of course, if neither of you can be mad at each other, that would be even better. He flutters his gills softly and you release his face. ”i brought a thing for you”

”thing?” John asks. You quickly remove a glove from your sylladex and snap it on before retrieving the jar you brought back with you. John watches you curiously. You open the jar and his eyes light up like it’s Christmas. You have to wonder if he can smell them. There hasn’t been much looking into their senses just yet. Mostly just trying to get them here to look into. You pluck one of the jellyfish from the jar and John’s all over you like a dog wanting a treat.

”whoa john,” you giggle. You climbs on you as you try to pull the jar out of his reach. He sucks the Aurelia aurita from out of your hand, nipping your fingers through your glove. Realising there is no longer a jellyfish in your hand, he wriggles himself to try to stand on his tail, finally knocking you both over. John sticks his face into the top of the jar as best he can as you laugh . ”jfc i didn’t know you’d like them that much.”

John reaches into the jar gladly, eating all of them within a few seconds. So much for that lasting a while. He takes the jar from you and hops back into the water. You try to get the feeling back in your cheeks. Carefully you lean over the edge of the perch to peer into the water. John pokes his head back out suddenly, pushing the jar into your lap.

”oh man what is this?” You peer into the jar. It seems to be full of scales. John’s bright blue scales to be specific. You glance back to John curiously.

”scales,” he says. ”you want scales?” He’s probably referring to when you had to take some samples from him. Not that he’s wrong, really. You’ve been dying to get some more. You grin at him.

”thanks john,” you tell him, petting his head softly. ”i appreciate this”

”welcome back roxy.”

== >

”man we don’t have room for anymore of these things” Dave grumbles, watching you take measurements of your new addition. Dirk’s reckless self endangerment has led him to discovering the entire clan of merpeople. Not to mention a nasty little spy.

”There’s plenty of room,” you assure him. ”There’s room in Kanaya’s pool.” Besides, you’ve been waiting to introduce another one to her pool. From what you’ve viewed, she likely feeds on other merpeople. Not cannibalistically, but parasitically.

”whoa what the fuck” Dave says suddenly and you glance back down to the creature you’re measuring. A handful of scales has fallen off into your palm with the slightest of touches. You motion Dave to grab a pan for you to drop them in before running your hand over the broad tail side again. The scales fall out fairly easily, each one appearing to have been painstakingly stuck between each natural scale and glued in place with some sort of mucus. Being out of the water seems to have made them come loose.

”what the fuck is wrong with it??”

”I think it was disguising itself,” you guess. The grey scales hide bright red ones underneath. These are far brighter than even John’s blue ones. You doubt bright red is in the plan of survival for these creatures. It would be visible from miles away, even under water. You set aside your tape measure in order to pick up a short bristled brush and use it to begin removing all of the artificially placed scales.

”that’s creepy as hell” Dave says. Indeed, the new addition is not grey as first assumed, but a bright, vivacious red. You can’t say you had thought of something like this. This is interesting. You’ve already discovered that these creatures do have social norms of the way they are supposed to look which leads you to be very curious whether or not this act of hiding was due to social pressure or survival instinct.

”When you put it in the pool, put some of those scales back. I want to see if he’ll do it again,” you instruct your brother. Dave scoffs.

”i’m not putting him anywhere” comes the simple reply. ”dirk said this one was even worse than the jade one i’ll pass” You glance to him pointedly. ”i mean look john is one thing but he hasn’t bitten anyone yet i’ll remind you he is the only one of these things that hasn’t bitten one of us yet look at these teeth man”

Dave plies the unconscious creature’s mouth open to gesture to the multiple rows of short, nubby teeth that line them. Of course, all of the other specimens you have sport extreme sharp teeth, so you’re not sure what his deal is.

”if those aren’t bone grinding teeth i don’t know what are”

”You’re telling me you’re refusing to move it because you think it has ‘bone grinding teeth’?” you confirm.

”hell yes i am” he assures you.

”You’re twelve,” you answer, smirking at him. ”You are literally twelve.”

”joke all you want these things are dangerous”

”Dangerously cuddly.”

”rose no did you no see what the jade one did to feferi?”

”Fine fine,” you reply simply. ”I’ll have Roxy help me, then.”

”i’ll do it” he deadpans back.

”No, really. Roxy will be happy to help me.”

”let’s just get this over with before he wakes up and eats our bones” he scoffs at you. You rolls your eyes, picking up the canister to douse the create with another lungful of sleepy time air just in case.

”You big baby.”

== >

Karkat? Karkat? The Signless’ woe wakes up practically everyone. Slowly you swim out of your shared hive to find out what’s going on. Dad Egbert and Jake follow, of course.

This isn’t funny, Karkat, Kankri insists promptly.

karkat?

K4RK4T?

KARKAT

Soon the entire cluster is shouting for him. There is no reply. As of the recent events, it’s unanimously agreed that this could only means the humans have gotten him. Signless mourns.

TThis is enough! How many more are going ttwo go missing before we do sometthing aboutt itt! the Psionic shouts. Several reply with their agreements. You don’t understand how Karkat of all people got caught. He didn’t even like going near the surface let alone anywhere near anything that even remotely might be a human.

PLEASE BE PATIENT Dad Egbert insists.

I really dont reckon the humans are being malicious, Jake agrees quickly. This you find odd. Why is Jake suddenly agreeing with him?

Why do you defend the humans? Are you helping them, Dad Eg8ert? the Marquise demands, approaching on him quickly. Dad Egbert backs away briskly and they show sharp mouths full of teeth at one another.

HOW RUDE he huffs sharply. I AM DISPLEASED BY THIS AS YOU ARE I SIMPLY DO NOT THINK ATTACKING THEM WILL GAIN US ANY FAVORS THERE ARE FAR MORE OF THEM THEN THERE ARE OF US

Uh… how do you know that? the Summoner questions suddenly.

ROXANNE Dad Egbert replies bluntly. The Marquise swims back with an annoyed flutter of her fins.

This pe88le 8rain is out of his waters, she snaps. The only thing we should 8e taking his word for is how many hours he can float face up in the sun for without damaging his pe88le 8rain.

BITE YOUR TONGUE he growls back and she responds with just as much aggressive. You’re concerned they’re going to fight.

Oh what? 8ecause you were raised 8y Nanna we’re supposed to just take your word for it? Another fry went missing! 8ut it’s okay! Dad8ert is sure the humans are friendly!

quiet! Grandma English finally cuts in sharply. neither of you are the decision makers if you’ll remember! the grand highblood has yet to change his mind and you will respect that! everyone go back to bed! we will search for karkat when the sun has awaken!

Everyone slowly returns to their hives. You see The Marquise flicker her quills at Dad Egbert before swimming off with her with her matesprit. He shows his teeth in annoyment, staying back a moment to watch everyone disperse. When he believes everyone to be gone, he swims away. He’s not coming back to the hive and though you try to keep him in your line of sight, he eventually is gone all together. Where could he possibly be going.

Jade, Vriska says to you suddenly. Jane said she saw a 8oat head into the lazy hills a couple suns ago. Take everything you need. We’re leaving in the sun. If you’re still up for it.

i, you’re not so sure about this anymore. However, now both Karkat and John are gone. You really can’t let them stay gone and despite what Dad Egbert and Jake insists, the humans make your nervous. alright! i’ll be ready

  
  
  



	6. These Things

You’ll admit, this tank is much nicer than your old one. Roxy gladly hops in your tank on a daily basis to swim with you or just talk with you and it’s really nice. Dirk’s been nicer to you, as well lately. You’re not sure why, really. You’re not complaining, obviously. It’s almost homey. It’s not home, clearly, but Roxy assures you everything is going well. You take it to mean that they’ll be able to get you home soon.

You can’t remember how long you’ve been here now. You can’t see the sun and the movement of the world seems nonexistent. You smile for Roxy but you feel like you’re rotting from the inside out. The air is stale and the water sterile. The suns run together and the food is already dead. You’re getting heavier and you can tell because you keep shedding your old scales for newer, better fitting ones and it makes you look sick.

In your misery, though, there is something you’ve noticed. Roxy is so much happier than she was when you first arrived. You’re not sure, but you think it’s because of you. You’re not sure why that would be, but she always insists that she’s so much happier when she’s around you. When you think about it, though, you’re happier when she’s around, too. This concerns you because, well, you think she may be your matesprit.

That is ridiculous because what kind of cruel fate would make your matesprit a human? Even if you felt that way about Roxy and were ready for a matesprit, that would just be cruel. If that was the case, you’d much rather just be like your dad and not have a matesprit at all. Do humans even have matesprits? How would that even work?

Plus everyone you’ve ever known has known their quadrants right away. It’s like instinct for you guys. Even Karkat knew Terezi was his matesprit immediately. She, unfortunately, wasn’t his but that didn’t mean he didn’t know. You can’t be kidnapped, held in a tank, make friends, and then realise you’ve been with your matesprit all along. That’s insane.

You try not to think about it very much. That machine can hear you think and they’re getting exceedingly well at knowing what all those noises and colours mean. You don’t need to be thinking about this anyways. You’re not going to stay here so it doesn’t matter.

As you nibble obsessively on a squiggly, you mean anemone whatever the hell that is, you hear Dave yelling with his mouth bits and Roxy laughing. You’re not sure what’s going on, but they’re definitely coming to your tank. You swim up towards the surface, peering out curiously to find out what’s happening.

”stop! bro! seriously! fuck! jesus christ!”

You hop onto your ledge in hopes of having a better view. A large, mostly red mass is inelegantly thrown into your tank and lands with a large splash.

karkat?

You hop back into the water as the possible Karkat shaped lump attempts to launch itself back out of the tank. Even you can’t make that jump. He doesn’t even get his tail out of the water before he crashes back into the water. That doesn’t stop him from trying again, though, this time throwing himself against the tank wall and managing to stick there with his tiny pins long enough to snap his jaw full of teeth at Dave.

”fucking christ look at me i told you it was vicious as dicks like if you put teeth on a scrotum” Dave says. Roxy only laughs louder. You dart towards Karkat swiftly, wrapping your arms around him and aggressively dragging him down to the bottom of the tank.

karkat! i’m so happy to see you! You rub your face and gills all over his, gladly showing him all the affection in the world. You haven’t seen any of your friends since, since Sollux! You’re not sure why Sollux hasn’t been back, which does concern you a bit, but Karkat’s here!

GET OFF OF ME! Karkat snaps at you, bashing his head against you angrily. Yep, same old Karkat. He shoves you away with every ounce of his minor strength and immediately darts off to hide himself in the cubby hole you’ve made your bed in. You hurry after him, poking your head into it and earning yourself a sharp bite in the process.

karkat, you murmur, trying to pull him out by whatever bits of him you can grab onto. Karkat replies by biting whatever parts of you he can get his mouth around. are you okay?

AM I OKAY? Karkat hisses, shoving his head out of your hive to smile at you. I HAVE BEEN STOLEN, MY COAT TAKEN, CRAMMED INTO A STRANGE BUBBLE, DRAGGED ACROSS THE SMOOTH STONE, AND THROWN INTO THIS STUPID, WEIRD TASTING WATER. HOW DO YOU THINK I AM?

karkat no, you reply submissively, rolling yourself over slowly. it’s not like that. they’re helping us.

HELPING US? HELPING US DO WHAT? STARVE TO DEATH? I DIDN’T ASK TO BE HELPED JOHN, he answers viciously, yanking his head back into the little hive and blocking up the entrance with his tail.

no. see. the humans spilled some oil where we live and they’re just trying to make it right, you try to explain.

WELL GUESS FUCKING WHAT JOHN. THEY LIED TO YOU.

roxy’s my friend. she wouldn’t do that, you assure him.

THE UGLY TWO TAILED THING THAT KIDNAPPED YOU WOULDN’T TELL YOU A LIE? he repeats. Now that someone else says it, you see the issue. Still though, why would she lie to you? That would mean she was getting something, right? You glance up mildly to where Roxy’s peering down at you and your friend curiously.

have you seen kanaya? you ask quietly. Karkat tells you he is afraid. You cringe.

THEY BROKE HER, he says.

what do you mean? Though you don’t really want to know the answer. Was that your fault? It probably was.

THEY MAKE HER TALK LIKE THEM, he says. I DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE’S SAYING. SHE MAKES THESE NOISES AT NIGHT LIKE A WHALE. SHE’S SO ANGRY JOHN.

There’s an explanation for this, surely. Maybe Kanaya got an infection or something from the oil and they’re trying to help her. Or maybe some of their equipment malfunctioned and it’s messing with Kanaya’s voice and they’re trying to fix it. You hear Roxy beckon you upward. Karkat hears it, too.

DON’T, he says firmly. Roxy’s your friend, though. You head for the surface cautiously. Karkat mourns for you.

“is your friend ok, john?” Roxy asks softly. See, she’s even worried for him. This is all a big misunderstanding. Even Sollux had assured you everything was fine.

”yes, roxy,” you assure her. ”he is fine. big baby.”

”lol he and dave had a bit of trouble,” she tells you. You glance towards Dave who, indeed, looks like he had an altercation with Karkat. Dave unfortunately doesn’t have a strong enough outer skin to protect him from all those angry bites.

”is he alright?” you ask.

”he’s finp,” she scoffs. ”fine. he’s had worse.” Dave does not look like he agrees with this statement. However, you’re sure he’s fine. Karkart’s mainly a herbivore, how much damage could he really do? You hoist yourself up onto your rock to sit with her. ”so john, your lil’ friend doesn’t seem to know, like, any english whatsoever so we can’t really talk ta him.”

You’re not surprised, really. Karkat has never held any interest in the humans and thus never bothered to learn anything about them. You try to call Karkat up but he doesn’t budge even slightly, assuring you that you can go have fries with a shark.

”he is, um, not human friendly,” you say. Roxy frowns a bit as she pets your gills tenderly.

”does he have a name?” she asks. You can’t answer immediately because you’re not entirely sure how to say his name with your mouth bits. You’re not sure if you know the words to make Karkat’s name. The words you want to use sound a little odd in your head.

“karkat?” you finally announce. Roxy nods an agreement.

”that’s a pret common troll name,” she says. She’s curious as to where you get your names, but you’re not really sure what that means. Don’t humans come with names? ”can u tell him what’s happening?”

”i did,” you promise. ”he is not happy about it.”

STOP TALKING TO IT JOHN! Karkat shouts at you.

roxy is my friend, karkat, you insist.

IT’S GOING TO PUT YOU IN A CAN AND SELL YOU FOR A PEBBLE, he snaps back. That’s just a myth. Humans don’t eat seafood.

”can you tell him that dave’s his friend?” she murmurs.

”i can try,” but you make no promises. You don’t think Karkat’s going to accept a human friend any time soon. roxy says dave is going to bring you food regularly.

Karkat replies.

”um,” you hesitate. ”karkat says dave can stick fishing hooks in its weird human genitals. he also says he doesn’t know what ‘tapping’ is but if dave doesn’t stop talking about it he’s going to, uh, words that i- probably shouldn’t repeat,” you trail off.

”great you know what’s better than this? nothing nothing is better than this moment right here absolutely nothing,” Dave sighs irritably.

”he says you should stop thinking. you’re going to hurt yourself.”

Roxy laughs. She’s finding this all very amusing. You’re glad for that, at least, because Dave certainly isn’t amused. You lean on Roxy a bit and she leans back on you, her weird skin not quite so weird anymore. You’re positive Karkat will like Roxy. He just needs to be in a better mood.

”karkat with me?” you ask.

”hmm, no i’m sorry john. rosie needs him somewhere else,” Roxy explains.

”with sylph?” you question in hopes of her telling you something else. She doesn’t, but she does get a little nervous. Roxy leans her head against your throat a bit.

”i need you 2 trust me, john,” she says softly. You feel like you shouldn’t, at least not so easily, but you do. After all, you’re safe and Karkat’s safe. Karkat’s safe _here_  and so many things could have happened already that hasn’t.

”okay roxy,” you answer. You spot Karkat hovering around the bottom of your tank, having finally come out of your hive. He’s now a weird mass of grey, green, blue, and red scales. He’s clearly rummaging for more of your lost scales. ”can i have one of your skins?” She doesn’t understand immediately, but when she does she gladly hops to her feet.

”dave! give me your sweater,” she insists, already trying to rip his skin off him.

”what no” he deadpans back, ensuring a little brawl between the two of them. ”get off roxy”

”i’ll get you off,” Roxy answers, effectively paralyzing him. ”it’s already wet anyways and there’s bite marks in the sleeves. gimme gimme.”

”fuck fine just take it,” Dave finally gives in, allowing Roxy to yank it off over his head. She hurried back into your tank with the human’s weird skin, you mean sweatshirt, and hands it to you. You take it and gladly hop back into the water where you have the second dumbest fight of the day. Karkat fights with you viciously as you try to wriggle the skin onto him. This fight is easily won by you as Karkat is tiny and nonthreatening. When you do finally get it on him, he inflates violently.

The sweater, of course, stretches with him. It’s at this point that Karkat calms down enough to examine the new thing. He pulls at it curiously but it’s nigh indestructible. He deflates gradually and chews on the collar a little before looking back to you.

WHAT IS THIS? he asks. He can acts as nonchalant as he wants about it, but you know he likes it.

it’s dave’s skin! you assure him.

HUMANS SHED? he questions, pulling the bottom of it down to cover his fins as well. It doesn’t fit him like it does Dave, but it doesn’t really matter.

not really? you reply. they have like eight outer skins that they can change but like one under skin that’s really delicate and warm and kind of weird. they keep a lot of it exposed, too? i don’t know why but i guess it’s normal?

FUCKING WEIRD, Karkat scoffs. He’s not wrong. IT CAN’T HAVE IT BACK.

You swim back to the surface where Roxy waits eagerly.

”he likes it?”

”he says dave can’t have it back.”

Roxy laughs.

== >

“Dirk?” Feferi calls quietly from the open door of your workroom. You turn in your chair slightly to view her. She looks worried. ”)(ave you seen Sollux around?”

”Nah,” you reply. ”He quit.”

”W)(at? )(e- )(e didn’t mention anyt)(ing to me,” she murmurs.

”Said something about going back home. Didn’t give us any warning, either, just up and left,” you explain.

”)(e didn’t leave anyt)(ing for me, did )(e?”

”Fraid not,” you have to tell her. She sighs. You don’t think it’s particularly strange for Sollux to leave without any warning. He came out of absolutely no where and he was bound to leave the same way.

”You don’t )(appen to know w)(ere ‘)(ome’ is, do you?” she asks, desperately looking for any information to get in contact with him. You greatly doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon. Rose will talk to her eventually.

”Sorry. I don’t. Maybe you should talk to Aradia? She seems to know a lot about him,” you suggest. Feferi nods a bit sadly.

”Yeah)(. Sorry for bot)(ering you.”

”No problem. Let me know if you find anything out.”

This does give you an idea. You have something new you’d like to try.

== >

You flitter your pencil between your fingers absently. You really don’t want to work on this. Man this is dumb. Dare you say, this is even hella dumb. John’s interesting, sure, you could watch John all day, but all this paperwork is not on the top of your favorite things. You have learned an awful lot from him, though, and you really should be compiling some sort of note system or something.

John really likes his friend. He and Karkat show a much stronger connection than Karkat and Kanaya does. Kanaya seems to act like a caretaker. Not quite aggressive enough to be motherly, but clearly worried about Karkat and his wellbeing. With John, however, there is a clearly stronger bond. They roughhouse with each other and despite John chasing Karkat all over the cripple creation and receiving more than his fair share of bites, Karkat still cuddles with him.

They clean each other almost obsessively and John has since expanded his little sleeping hole to fit them both. You have to wonder if they’re romantic. You’re not even sure if their culture has romantics and you have no idea how you’d tell even if they did. While you have observed them primping and dressing themselves for likely status reasons, there’s nothing proving that this is to attract mate. Plus, you’ve yet to see them naturally use their mouths for anything besides food consumption. You have, however, seen Karkat fondle John’s ears when John had no let you do this.

You would really like to view how their romance works and to some extent their reproduction as well. You chew on the end of your pencil idly. They wouldn’t bred in captivity would they? You mean, they all have expressed a strong desire to return home. Regardless to whether there’s enough food, room, and resources, they’re aware enough to have feelings about it.

Can they even reproduce? John and Karkat don’t appear to be the same subspecies. You severly doubt Kanaya and Karkat would produce offspring together. Kanaya and John pose a similar problem, though Rose has made it very clear that she doesn’t want Kanaya and John anywhere near each other. She hasn’t told you why, exactly, but you trust her decisions.

You don’t know how human they are. John thinks and he feels and he learns and he _understands_. He can adapt. When you think about it, it’s scary really. There are these things that are bigger than you and stronger than you with teeth made for ripping and tearing and they live down at a depth where the human body would be crushed under the pressure. Where a _seadweller_  would be smashed into the size of a tin can. You don’t know how many there are or how they live or really anything about them.

But they know about you. They know know what your boats sound like and how to avoid you and what you drop in their waters. The worse part is, they can walk with you and no one would even notice. What would happen if they got fed up and came out of the water? You wouldn’t have a chance.

And you know full well that John has no qualms with eating both human and troll meat as well as having some server cannibalistic tendencies. Whether starving or not, they eat indiscriminately.

You sigh, glancing back down to your notebook of which you have only so far drawn a dick in. You don’t want to do this anymore. Not out of fear, of course, John is a total sweetheart and if the others are any sign, the merfolk only lash out in their immediate self defense. You just, well, you feel weird about all of this now.

You shove away from your table, leaving your notes, or lack therefore, all alone in your room. You don’t need notes to remember stuff anyways. Quite honestly, you’d much rather spend you time around John anyways and thus that’s what you’re off to do.

Dirk has beat you to it today. He sits with his feet in the water and Karkat laid in his lap. You don’t know how he does it, but all of the merpeople are just fucking pleased to sit with Dirk and have their gills and earfins pet. As soon as John realises you’re in the room, he flings himself up out of the water to peer over the edge for a brief second.

”roxy!” he yelps before disappearing and then reappearing again. ”roxy!”

You hurry down the ladder and gladly plop yourself beside Dirk. Karkat darts off immediately, swimming away from you. John throws his torso into your lap. He’s wearing glasses of all things. Glasses that make him adorable as well.

”roxy! did you know that sand is made up of lots of little sands,” he says excitedly.

”Grains,” Dirk informs absently.

”i mean grains! and- and did you know-” John stops suddenly, staring at you. You glance away slightly, unsure of what he’s looking at. You wave your hand in front of his face and he snaps out of it quickly.

”did u kno ur a cutie?” you reply, grabbing his earfins and rubbing your nose against his gladly. John sticks his tongue out at you.

”well that, too, but no,” he answers, hoisting his tailfin up onto the ledge beside him. They have very flexible spins. ”no look. my fins. also have tiny scales. i didn’t know that,” he exclaims happily.

”Bro was blind as cock,” Dirk says. You had figured as much. You should have considered making him glasses. John picks at the fine scales that line caudal gladly. Quickly becoming bored with this, he notices your hand and immediately begins to examine the nearly nonexistent web between your fingers.

”careful john,” you say. ”with those glasses, you make all the lady merpeople go ‘whaa’.”

”Is that what lady merpeople go?” Dirk answers.

”no actually i think they go ‘stfu’,” you reply blandly.

”Are you sure you’re not confusing ‘lady merpeople’ with yourself? Does John make the Roxy go ‘whaa’?” Dirk teases you. You puff your cheeks out indignantly.

”hey john,” you say and John glances up to you mildly. ”you know i think dikr has jellyfish in his sylladex.”

John proceeds to drag Dirk into the water. You think you’ve won this round.

”*dirk”

== >

‘Painful’ does not do justice to the intense horror that spikes through your body. It’s like you're being ripped in two by sheer force. You rub your face into the sand, trying to find some comfort but the rough surface only irritates your unprotected skin. Your teeth don’t fit in your mouth like they should. You knew it would be bad, but this is ridiculous. You can hear Jade shouting.

You force yourself to move, your new weird tails not working they way your old one did. The joints buckle, crammed into an angle that limits your movement something horrible and every little twist and turn set your nerves on fire something awful. When you finally stand, you can barely concentrate. It’s hard to see, the moon offering only a little light and your eyes not working properly.

Get up, you demand, each word a horrible strain. Do you hear that?

the grand highblood that has taken up residence in my skull? yeah i definitely hear that! Jade whines.

No. Listen.

Over the gasps for breath and the pain of suddenly being smaller and human, the sound if clear.

K4N4Y4.

She knew I’d come. Let’s go! Your quills bristle under your disguise.


	7. She's My Roxy

You’re awake instantly. Is that? Carefully, you peek your head out of your hive. You’d know your moirail anywhere. You swim around the edge of your tank quickly, trying to peer out into the darkness. They’ve never brought someone in so late at night. Surely she isn’t hurt or something. She gets closer and she sounds hurt. This concerns you greatly.

John!

vriska! over here!

She was not brought here, you can already tell that much. Suddenly she’s standing on the other side of your tank. She’s actually standing on human tails with a human face and human eyes. This is so weird. She grins at you sharply.

Your sailor's here, she says. You hear something break in another part of the room and Vriska closes her eyes in annoyance. They’re also here.

terezi! shh!

SORRY! 3V3RYTH1NG SM3LLS FUNNY

Go find Kanaya and Karkat, Vriska instructs sharply. You watch your sisters hurry off in separate direction, Terezi straight into a wall. Jade grabs her wrist quickly and leads her in another direction. Vriska hurries around your tank in search for some kind of exit, immediately becoming irritated. You follow her.

vriska, you insist quickly, trying to get her attention. what are you doing here?

For the free cake. What the hell do you think I’m here for, John? she snaps at you.

did the grandparents send you? you ask worriedly. You hope they’re not worried about you.

No- Alright, that’s a little disappointing you’ll admit. They think the humans are harmless, Vriska scoffs. Unable to find a way to get you out of the tank, she throws herself against the wall. You flinch.

they are harmless, you tell her. they’re trying to help us. She stop in order to stare at you.

Are you out of your mind?

”Yo, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Dirk appears out of nowhere, surprising both you and Vriska. He puts a hand on her shoulder and all at once, her quills spring to life, splattering cerulean blood all over your tank and ripping Dirk’s arm and part of his face open. This is the first time you’ve seen him startled.

dirk!

VR1SK4!

vriska we have to go! a whole bunch of humans are coming!

You have to help Dirk! He just kind of convulses on the ground and you don’t think humans are supposed to do that! You hurry to the surface at once, dumbly flopping around the ledge in search of the human climbing device. Try as you might, you can not get up it.

John! Vriska yells at you. How do we get you out?

If you knew the answer to this question, you would definitely be out of here already. The ladder falls into your tank and suddenly everyone’s panicking. This is really bad!

vriska we have to go!

J8hn!

you have to help dirk! you shout back.

What the hell is a dirk?

You struggle with the climbing device but you can’t get it back on the wall and even if you could, there’s no way you can get up it with your tail. That’s probably why they left it there. You jump in the water in a frenzy and dart to the bottom. Without any hesitation, you swim upwards and try to fling yourself over the edge. You miss it completely.

J8hn! Vriska yells again but this time she’s angry. Jade grabs her arm and pulls her away from your tank. They flee from the building. You fling yourself at the side of your tank again, reaching for the edge. Your fingers slip against it though, scratching the glass wall with your scales all the way down. You can hear Dirk dying! You try again and again until you finally get your forearm over the side. You fight and claw desperately until you can drag your heft over the side and land on the floor with a hard smack.

You drag yourself to Dirk on your hands quickly.

”roxy!” You don’t know what to do! How do you treat a human? You have to do something! Anything is better than nothing. You put your mouth against the open wound and your sharp teeth immediately tear through his skin but you don’t worry about it right now. You try to suck out as much of the poison as you can, but you have no idea if it’s working. You don’t have teeth like Kanaya does and the poison is making you stomach sick, but it won’t kill you.

”what the fuck!”

You’ll be the first to admit, this looks bad. There’s blood all over your face and you probably look like you’re trying to eat Dirk’s arm. Dave kicks you in the face. When you don’t let go he kicks you again, forcing you off.

”What on earth is happening?”

”sedate it now before i deal with it!”

”john?”

You want to help. Roxy tells you she’s disappointed with you.

”roxy-”

The needle punctures your scales without any effort and you go to sleep.

You wake up in the bottom of your tank, which you think is a good thing considering Dave wanted you not to have a face when you went to sleep. You move sluggishly, everything disoriented and kind of blurry. Carefully, you slink across the bottom of your tank and stick your head into your hive for your glasses. You fix them onto your face before slowly making your way to the surface. You don’t see or smell any blood which is good, you think.

You’re kind of nervous about making any noise. What if they’re still upset with you? You know you didn’t do anything, but they probably don’t know that, right? You also want to know if Dirk’s okay, though. Peering around cautiously for anyone, you climb out onto your ledge and proceed to roll onto your back. There’s no way they can be mad at you when you’re this submissive.

”roxy?” you call wearily. ”roxy?” And then you wait. You don’t have to wait for very long. Roxy pokes her head over the side of your tank for a moment before returning with a ladder that she lowers down onto your ledge and hurriedly shimmies down.

”yer awake!” she grins. You hope this is a happy human grin and not a I’m going to bite your face Karkat grin. She pats your underbelly softly. ”oh man i’m so sorry about that john. i hope you’re not mad at me.”

”never mad at you, roxy,” you assure her. Again, that situation looked really bad without any context. Roxy says she’s sad. Weirdly enough though, she’s also happy. You aren’t sure what to do with this. ”is dirk alright?”

”he’s fine,” she scoffs. ”it wasn’t deadly or anything. just like super painful. he’s suffering from a little blindness but it’ll wear off eventually,” she explains. You bristle your gills slightly, unsure. Blindness sounds like kind of a big deal. Roxy touches your face softly, wriggling your nose between her thumb and index finger. You shake your face.

”stop,” you scoff.

”your nose is bruised,” she murmurs. Your rub your face in your hand curiously. You don’t think you know what a bruise is. It doesn’t sound familiar. ”i’m sorry.”

”me too,” you answer.

”you could have left, john,” she suggests. You guess you could have. That’s what they came for, wasn’t it?

”why?” you huff back. ”you’re helping me.”

”yeah,” she replies. ”i guess.” She doesn’t say anything else for a while, eventually adjusting herself to lay down beside you, though the rock must be pretty uncomfortable for her. She’s so sorry and you don’t know what for. You pet her in hopes of calming her down and nuzzle her gently.

”thank you for trying to save dirk, john.”

”you get what you deserve,” you reply and hope that it means the same thing that Nana preached. You don’t think it does.

== >

”How are you doing?” Rose asks. You glance toward her voice absently, fixing the bandages on your arm for the third time.

”Been better,” you answer. Rose approaches you, taking your wounded arm in her hands to fix the mess of elastic for you. You sit back a little. You’re still a little numb from the drugs and quite honestly don’t currently feel like doing anything ever again. There are things to be done, unfortunately. ”Roxy says she doesn’t want to do this anymore,” you mutter. She waits a delicate moment before answering.

”And what about you?” She has every right to ask this of you, even if you think she shouldn’t have to.

”This isn’t about me,” you reply.

”Obviously,” Rose answers blandly. ”If it was about you, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you.”

”I still have unanswered questions,” you assure her. This is a fair answer.

”And Dave?” she continues. She releases your arm and you flex your fingers slightly, testing the tautness of the bandages.

”He’s onboard.”

”Surprising,” Rose murmurs. She sounds bitter about it. You understand her frustrations. This was never about the merpeople for her. She doesn’t want to admit that she’s hoping for something that’s extremely improbable and just except the brilliancy she has in her lap. For this, however, you can’t blame her.

”He’s not here for Roxy,” you tell her.

”He would have fooled me,” she answers. ”If Roxy no longer ‘wants to do this’, then she doesn’t have to. No one’s forcing her.”

”Rose-”

”It’s fine.”

”You should talk to her.”

”I said it’s fine,” she snaps at you. You hold your hands up immediately. You don’t even want to recall the last time you got between Rose and Roxy. Let’s just say you aren’t an amazing autispice. You’ll only make things worse. You stand, already steady on your feet despite your current inability to see. You wrap your arms around her carefully. Rose leans on you.

== >

”A warning would have been nice.”

You lower your project slightly, making sure to keep it out of the water, to glance up. She doesn’t look very upset and she doesn’t tell you she’s upset so you take it as a straightforward comment. A warning would have been nice. You look back to your little sewing mess.

”To Be Fair” you say. ”I Didn’t Know She Could Use Her Quills Like- That” you argue. You know only slightly more than Rose does about these things. After all, what little you do know about the humans was learnt all second hand. Second hand from someone you thought to be a little crazy. Alright, entirely mad.

”I don’t believe she did it without injury to herself,” Rose says. This sounds like something Vriska would do. You simply hope that she didn’t seriously hurt herself. You then remember that this is Vriska you’re talking about and she is likely nursing her wounds without the slightest bit of regret. You sigh idly. Carefully, you lift yourself out of the tub a bit and shake out the nice skirt you’ve been working very hard on.

”Will You Try This On” you ask. ”I Believe I Got It Right This Time.” Rose takes the skirt from you and holds it up to her waist. Human legs are so weird and you’re finding it very difficult to make something that makes them look acceptable. Rose has lent you all the materials you could ask for, however, so you’ll continue to work diligently.

”What are the slits on the side for?” she questions.

”For Your- Oh” You pressing your finger into your forehead. ”Humans Don’t Have Fins Right”

”It’s cute,” Rose promises. ”I’ll try it on.”

”No” you say irritably. ”I Will Just Make Another One”

”Perhaps make them into pockets?” she suggests. ”I have to say, a shocking amount of my clothes lack this simple feature.”

”Why Do You Require Pockets” you ask, a tiny bit curious. It seems pockets would be rendered more or less pointless.

”Believe it or not, ejecting one’s entire sylladex simply to locate a pen is not an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon,” Rose replies. You see her point.

”I Would Really Much Rather Just Make A New One” you scoff. Rose folds up your unfortunately ruined skirt and places it in her desk with the rest.

”Far be it from me to tell you otherwise,” she says. You find sewing relaxing and generally pretty fun, so you were bound to make another regardless. You think Rose knows this, too. So firstly, humans need to move their legs at a pretty large rang of motion. Secondly, they are actually super tiny. Lastly, no fins. This is progress. Well, you mean, this was all stuff you already knew and simply don’t consider. Humans are pretty weird.

”Will Your Friend Be Alright” you ask idly. You had heard him suffer, after all.

”Dirk has expressed an extreme interest in your sister’s toxins. He’ll be fine,” Rose assures you with an amused chuckle. ”John has toxins as well, does he not?”

”Of Course” you reply. ”Unlike Vriska However John’s Are Defensive”

”And you?”

”I Do Not Have Toxins” you assure her. ”What Is The Opposite of Poison”

”Antidote,” she answers.

”I Have That” you explain. She ponders over this for a moment on her own. You ask her questions and she asks you questions and you both learn a little bit more about each other. In return, you don’t suck every last drop of blood from her body and she doesn’t rip your tail from your waist. You are positive this is how your people and the humans were supposed to get along, mutually benefiting from each other.

Or, obviously, each of your own species could have kept their grubby little mitts to themselves, but you guess that is a fish that has long since dug.

”I have another theory I would like to test. You think your friend will be back?” Rose sits on the side of your tub gracefully and you place your materials aside polietly.

”Certainly” As this continues to be Vriska you’re talking about, this really isn’t something you have to think about. She doesn’t give up so easily. ”If He Injured Her-”

”She injured herself.”

”He Gave Her No Choice”

”She had every choice.” You stare at her pointedly, a look of which is returned.

”I Digress If She Is Injured She Likely Won’t Be Back Soon” you assure her. ”But When She Does Return She Will Be Better Prepared And Likely No Happy”

”Mm,” Rose hums distantly. ”I’ll inform the staff.”

== >

You hate this door already. The solution to a low tech break in? High tech doors. To combat the angry merpeople trying to retrieve their stolen brethren, Dirk and Equius have installed card reader doors. Honestly you think just locking the doors would have worked, too. No one ever locked the doors around here because no one had ever been stupid enough to break in before. Likely also because none of you figured the merpeople could use doorknobs. John definitely can’t use a doorknob.

The door, however, will not open for you. This so figures.

”horuss! this frickin door is busted!” you yelp. Horuss briskly wanders over. He peers over your shoulder momentarily before straightening himself up.

”What seems to be the issue?” he questions.

”it won’t open,” you huff irritably. To this, he nervously rubs the back of his head.

”Why would it open?” he asks warily.

”that’s a dumb question” you reply blandly, crossing your arms over your chest. Horuss, however, finds this to be a perfectly legitimate question. ”john’s in there!”

”Ah. Yes?” he agrees. You’ve never had this much trouble with Horuss before. ”You- aren’t allowed in there.” he tells you, though it comes out much more question like. He seriously can’t be telling you you’re not allowed in your own lab or view your own subject.

”excuse me?”

”Ah,” he begins to sweat nervously. ”Mr. Lalonde made it very clear not to include you when I was programming everyone’s access codes.”

” _excuse ME?_ ” You can’t believe this! Rose has no right to try to keep you from John! And she certainly has no right locking you out of your lab! Horuss is standing in a puddle of his own sweat. He’s going to be no help to you. Angrily, you storm off.

You throw Dave’s door open aggressively. He stops what he’s doing just long enough to spare you an annoyed look.

”don’t worry about it” he says. ”knocking’s for assholes”

”open the observation door ofr me,” you demand, slamming the door closed behind you. Dave simply goes right back to his rolling papers like nothing’s wrong. “rose locked me out”

”yo i know that sounds like a good idea right now but did you consider that maybe there’s a reason she locked you out??” Dave murmurs, drawing his headphones down around his neck. He must be joking.

”reason?” you laugh. ”like she’s an obsessive lonely miserable _child_  who wants everyone to be just as lonely and miserable as her?”

”sure” Dave says. ” _or_  she knows you’re getting way too chill with john for your own good”

”christ!” you shout. ”you kno what even if that was true, so what dave?”

”so what roxy? he’s shark bait” Dave reminds you as if you weren’t already hyper aware of this fact. You rub your face into your hands and drag your cheeks down.

”shark bait,” you repeat slowly. ”for a shark that doesn’t exist!”

”yo if you got proof of that i’m sure rose would love to hear it” he says. You could strangle him right now.

”i have common sense?” you answer with a sarcastic smile.

”is this the same common sense that thought if you turned the oven up twice as high the food would cook twice as fast??” That’s completely irrelevant! Dave is intent on making you miserable right now, clearly.

”do you think they’re out there?” you ask. Dave just kind of shrugs like he doesn’t entirely know or care.

”i think there’s something out there” he responds. ”and right now our best bet at finding it is in your little fish boyfriend” You smack your hands against your face and proceed to scream into your palms. He’s doing this on purpose. You stare at him bitterly for a moment.

”fine. say that in some impossible series of events mom and bro are still out there and for some inconceivable reason they felt no need to try to contact us for _over a decade_. fine. what could that possibly have to do with me and john?”

”do you think john won’t find out” Dave asks. ”we kidnapped him, lied to him, used him to find his family so we could kidnap them then made him unknowingly lie to his friends so we could get their trust i mean do you want me to go on or?” He has a point. He has a terrible, pretty obvious point. You sit at the edge of his bed, considering your life choices carefully. ”so i mean just a theory and all but just maybe rose actually doesn’t want you to be lonely and miserable but you know i have really bad theories”

”do you rlly think john will find out?” you murmurs.

”oh man don’t do this i get it you’ve had terrible romantic experiences dirk didn’t return your feelings callie didn’t return your feelings all the awful awful men and women who only want you for your body here’s an idea why don’t you date someone that actually likes you like cronus or you know someone who isn’t cronus maybe someone who doesn’t have to endure extreme pain when you want to kiss them or i don’t know someone who you haven’t spent the last month lying to”

You stare at him coldly.

”you’re an asshole,” you scoff. You so don’t need this right now. Indignantly, you return to your feet and head straight for the door.

”roxy?” Dave calls after you. ”that may not have come out how i wanted”

”fuck you dave!”

== >

That smells awfully delicious. You swim around the cage curiously, trying to find a way into it. Boats drop stuff out here all the time and more often than not they’re filled will delicious and useful goods. After some searching, you discover a flap on the side which you promptly lift open and stick your head through. You wriggle yourself into the opening carefully, making sure your chest puffs don’t get you stuck in the thing. You work in one arm, then the other, and gladly accept your reward.

You sink your teeth into the fleshy piece of meat and rip off chunks gladly. Humans always have the best food. It’s really unfair, you think. You breath out a swallow of water through your gills and shake your tail calmly to keep yourself afloat. Wait. Wait. Are you moving? You are. You’re moving _up_.

All at once you try to squirm out of the little cage, jerking yourself around in hope of getting free. The hole seems much smaller now! The cage is rising very fast and this is starting to become a concern. Much too suddenly, you’re no longer in the water, your tail becoming much heavier out of the water. You immediately come face to face with a troll.

”i thought it was supposed to be a dude?”

”howw am i supposed to knoww?”

You squirm slightly, hoping that they’ll drop you preferably back into the water. This, however, does not happen. Instead, you’re hoisted over their boat and the cage less then gently dropped. This, you have to say, was kind of stupid of you. One of them holds up a piece of paper and they both peer at it curiously.

”it looks like john”

”good enough for me”

So this is pretty bad. You really should have been more careful. To your credit, floating human food has literally never turned out to be a trap. You didn’t think humans were smart enough to do something like that. One of the trolls approaches your tail and due to the confinements of the cage, you can’t see what it’s doing.

”Oh!” That was unpleasant! Did it just stab you! You fling your tail against the creature sharply, assuring it that you did not like that and certainly didn’t appreciate it.

”fuckin’ hell!”

The other one makes this weird noise with its mouth.

”got you good”

”wwhat the fuck did you do?”

You wriggle around as they make mouth noises at each other. Surely you can get out of here with enough effort. It’s a wire cage, there’s nothing to it.

”hey don’t yell at me i ain’t done nofin”

”wwell wwhat the fuck do wwe do?”

”i don’t know give it the fuckin’ alpha dose”

”you givve it the alpha dose”

”don’t be a fuckin’ guppy”

These things sure do snap at each other a lot. You wish something would happen, at least. This cage is starting to get a bit uncomfortable and your gills are drying out something awful. One of them leaves, though you have no idea where to, and the other crouches in front of you.

”that’s a nice tiara you have there” it says. You blink puzzledly. She reaches into your cage and carefully removes the gold band from around your head. You furrow your face with annoyment and snap out to bite its hand. It withdraws out of your reach unfortunately. That was rude. The other one returns, pausing suddenly to look at you. It looks at its friend sharply but says nothing.

It returns to your hind side and sticks you again. You flip your tail at it but this time, your tail doesn’t respond. Your head feels sluggish all of a sudden and you have to fight to keep your eyes open.

”you gonna put that back?”

”you gonna shut your face?”

Jane!


	8. Video Star

The noise that wakes you up is boggling. Like nothing you’ve ever heard before. The sound itself doesn’t make you angry, but the emotion it conveys drives you to want to draw blood. You’ve never been the violent type.

The Grand Highblood is screaming.

You never thought you’d see the day. The last time the Highblood shouted like this, the population crashed. You’ve heard the stories. Grandma English tries to quiet him, but he’s just so loud. The entire cluster is mourning, only adding to the clutter of sounds and expressions that is beginning to haze over your home. Even Dad Egbert has stilled his voice. He can’t defend the humans anymore. He wants to try, you know he does, but he knows better. They have simply gone too far.

”enough!”

Everyone hushes into silence. The Grand Highblood rises from his crevice twisted horns first, the ground shaking with his massive weight and the water stirring violently with the sudden changes. He lets out a massive noise from his toothed maw, giant bubbles of air floating far out of sight straight for the surface. Grandma English seats herself between his horns. You’ve never seen the Grand Highblood before as he generally stays hidden in his deep, dark crevice. He’s so big. You’re not sure anyone besides his children and moirail have seen him let alone like this.

”the humans have proven themselves anything but harmless! Grandma English commands. You have never heard her use this sound. “let us retrieve our kin at any cost! we are greater than the sum of our parts!”

And everyone responds, the passive and aggressive alike. There is no neutral ground here. The cluster can not survive without a successor. The Grand Highblood leads and without question, you all follow, swimming without hesitation and without wait. The only direction is forward. You think you could come to forgive the humans for this. You’re not sure.

== >

You wake up to the entire building shaking. You don’t think that’s your hangover, either. Said hangover doesn’t make it better, but still you’re certain that no hangover, no matter how bad, can shake a building. You force yourself off the ground, glancing around your room warily. It’s not an earthquake, surely. An earthquake shouldn’t be able to shake this building. The vodka bottle you’d emptied only a few hours prior rolls off your nightstand and conks you hard in the head.

”fucking-“ If your head didn’t hurt before, it definitely hurts now. You push yourself to your feet, holding your head in your hands and stumbling out of your room. A quick glance up and down the hall reveals no other people. You head off to find out what’s going on. A quick peek into Dirk’s room reveals that he isn’t there. This isn’t unusual, really, considering it’s the middle of the night and he’s probably working on something ridiculous and forgoing sleep. As if a bit of blindness would stop him.

Though, you think through the commotion and annoying lack of booze, Dirk has been acting sort of strange lately.

You peer into Dave’s room. He’s out like a rock, headphones blaring out some beat that’s disguising the building probably coming down. You come across the observation room only to discover that the door has been broken. The high tech door has seemed to have met its match by being ripped off its hinges. Carefully you peek your head in.

John’s tank is in pieces. Something very strong would have had to have done that after all, you can’t keep a large aquatic creature in a glass tank. In fact, you don’t believe it should have been able to shatter at all. A closer look proves this to be true, as all the pieces look to have been ripped apart by hand. You kick some of the pseudo-glass away with a socked foot and make your way across the room. Clearly something is happening.

It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to you. Maybe you should lay off the booze. Then again, you don’t think you’d be able to deal with this sober. The transmitter is losing its god damn mind and the noise is super irritating. You turn it off as you pass by on the way to Dirk’s lab. Dirk, surprisingly, is not in here. You head into your own lab.

You find John trying to climb over your bookcase. There’s no one else around. Did he break out of his tank by himself? More importantly, did he rip the door open? You approach him carefully, a little uncertain of the safety of both of you.

”john?”

John snaps his head towards you, startled, and immediately flails into the floor. Fish, you agree, are not very good at climbing. You’re not even sure how he managed to get himself in here to begin with. You have yet to observe him moving very quickly on his own out of water. With some inelegant movements, he gets himself into an upright position again and grabs at your skirt. You kneel down beside him.

”roxy,” he says happily. ”come with me, roxy.”

”with u?” you answer. This is concerning for so many reasons. ”where are you going?” Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a large figuring come at you rapidly. You throw yourself away from John at once. The figure snaps massive, razor sharp teeth at you and you prepare your fist. It doesn’t fight you, though, withdrawing at once with a suddenly sheepish look.

”he says sorry,” John pipes up. ”he didn’t know you were friend.” You’re too sober for this. John grabs your hand this time, pulling at you desperately. ”please roxy,” he says. ”come with me.”

”john, i really don’t-”

There’s a crash from another part of the building and you hear Dave’s girlish yelp. Oh man, how many of them are there? Even though you were prepared for this, it’s not exactly something you want to be happening. You thought you were prepared, at least. If John didn’t like you, you might have had a lot of trouble with that mouth full of teeth. John tugs at you again and because you are queen of not thinking things through, you reply.

”okay john” You really don’t know what possesses you to say this.

He jumps up excitedly, but only manages to yank you down, and kisses you with everything he’s got. And wow you feel your leg pop. John’s tail also pops. His, however, pops into legs. Crap, you didn’t mean to do that. He stands beside you, nearly an entire foot shorter than you all of a sudden, and smiles. He doesn’t seem to be hurt, which don’t get you wrong is wonderful, but why? Something’s changed clearly and your natural curiosity really wants to know what.

John’s purple blooded friend grabs his arm suddenly, getting his attention. You know they’re talking to each other, but you can’t hear a thing with your pitiful human brain. John entwined his fingers with yours and quickly leads you off on his new, slightly unstable, feet. Is that smoke? You have to part from John in order to grab a canister of oxygen. There’s only one place John could be going and this is already a bad idea. John, you believe, is directing his family to the others. He looks to you hopefully and you return to his side with swift steps.

He flees the building and you can already see the merpeople filing out from every window and door, some on legs and others not. They’re strong and agile, that much is clear, and even those lacking human legs are able to worm across the sand fast back into the ocean water. There’s still so much you don’t know about them. Now that you think about it, you don’t believe you and your siblings were ready to contain one of them, let alone more. You were too eager.

As you run across the sand you discover the reason for the building shaking. You stop dead in your tracks to stare in awe. That thing is huge. With a merperson sitting between its horns, the massive creature throws itself against the building with unharnessed strength. Jesus Christ what is that thing? That couldn’t possibly be a merperson, could it? John grabs your wrist gently, tugging you towards the water.

You look back to the massive creature with concern. Your family is still in there, after all. You don’t want them injured. John tugs you a little firmer and you hurry with him. He doesn’t lead you straight down the beach like the others, though. He grabs you around the waist and another merperson, a distantly familiar blue blood, grabs you from the other side.

”trust me,” he says. You do. They jump off the pier, ultimately dragging you down with them. The water is freezing and the shock chills you to the bone in seconds. This was a really bad idea. This was a ridiculous idea. What did you think was going to happen, you were going to magically grow blubber and a tail? John and his friend work together to reduce the drag from your body, and to their best effort they keep your head above water. They are so much better at taking care of you than you are of them.

They swim and swim and eventually you warm up to the water. Either that or you’re getting frostbite. You don’t know when you left the building, but the rising sun is good news for you. At some point John’s friend leaves your side and John adjusts you to rest on his back. This was a dumb idea. You are a dumb person. You are a dumb, drunk person. John rolls over slowly, moving you to rest on his chest instead. He pushes your hair back slightly. Compared to the water, his skin seems warm.

”are you okay, roxy?” he asks.

”yeah,” you murmur. ”finp. fune. fine. i’m fine.”

”we’re almost there,” he assures you.

”john,” you say. ”i can’t stay out here.”

”i know, roxy,” he answers. ”dad will know what to do.”

== >

”so roxy’s missing dirk has some minor injuries nepeta broke her arm the zahhak’s have some pretty bad burns and eridan sprained his leg” Dave lists for you. You pay more attention to your laptop. This wasn’t entirely unexpected. In fact, it was anything but. Unfortunately, that didn’t make you any better prepared. You didn’t expect them to have a fucking tank, after all. Surely they don’t naturally get that big.

”yo you listening?” Dave presses his foot against your back slightly.

”Did you want me to do something about that? Shall I magically render everyone okay with my magic healing powers?” you reply simply.

”could act a little worried” he says.

”Is someone dead or dying?” you ask.

”if you’ll remember i did start this conversation with roxy being missing” he reminds you. He sits down beside you in the sand, wiping his ash covered hands on his pants.

”She’s not missing,” you assure him. ”She left.”

”left into the deep blue ocean where she will probably freeze to death?” he questions. Leave it to Dave to be overdramatic. He’s so incredibly annoying. Perhaps you should push him in the ocean. This thought seems a little mean, you realise oddly.

”I know this may be a surprise to you, Dave, but Roxy has spent nearly her entire life in the water. Not only is she more than adept at maintaining her survival but she has an entire fleet of aquatic people that would like to keep her alive,” you explain.

”let me guess this was another part of your plan that you didn’t want to share with everyone??”

”Yes Dave. You got me. It was my plan all along to get swarmed by mermaids and have my older sister pseudo-kidnapped. Please take it easy on me officer. I won’t last in gay baby jail,” you cry, holding your wrist out you him sarcastically.

”point across so what now?” he asks. You close your laptop, tucking it into your sylladex.

”I don’t know,” you say. Of all things that you expected, you did not expect Roxy to leave. You have no idea what she was thinking. You doubt she would do something like this out of spite which leads you to think she did it for other reasons. Other reason that will end her up like your mother. Your heart wretches at the very thought. You can’t lose your mother and sister to the water. You just can’t.

”cool”

== >

As you continue to sober up, you realise more and more how stupid of an idea this was. You’re floating in the middle of the ocean on a piece of driftwood with no food, no fresh water, and no warmth. Even with your emergency oxygen, which at this point isn’t even helpful, you’re pretty much completely out of luck. You can’t see land in any direction. Man, you fucked up.

You feel a fin touch one of your legs and nearly have a heart attack. Can’t forget about the sharks, either! You’ve seen like four of those assholes so far. You know they’re typically harmless, especially considering you don’t look like their usual meals, but let’s be fair, no one wants a possibly hungry shark that close to them. John pops out of the water and you sigh in relief. You splash some water at him.

”that wasn’t funny!”

”sorry,” he answers but he grins like a moron. You kick him playfully, sending yourself floating gently away. He grabs your leg to drag you back. A second head pops up out of the water. This one seems to be lacking all colour. You’re not sure if this is natural or a sign of albinism. You really don’t need to be thinking about that right now. ”this is dad,” John introduces you. Oh awkward.

”uh. hello dad.”

”HELLO ROXY” he replies. ”I AM SORRY FOR KEEPING YOU WAITING”

”oh. nah it’s fine.” His english is really good. That kind of makes sense since John was pretty quick to pick it up.

”dad says he knows a place for you to stay,” John explains. ”will you come?”

”IT IS SAFE” Dad tells you. ”YOU NEED TO GO” Could anything really be any worse than this? You really don’t think so. Plus, you need to get out of this water and soon. You’ve already been in it too long and you’re pretty concerned that you’re going to have some serious injuries. You nod affirmatively.

”ok. thank you sorry fer all the trobble. trouble.”

”NO TROUBLE” Dad assures you. ”PLEASE HOLD ON” He gestures to the piece of wood you’ve been floating on and you hoist yourself onto the piece of wood a little more to get a better grip of it. John and Dad grab each side of the driftwood and swim off. John nuzzles you through the trip, playfully rubbing his face against yours and touching his fins to your bare leg. He’s so much happier now. Not only that, but he looks better already. He’s much more alert and the colour in his body is flushing back. You’re glad.

The little island isn’t that far away. You have no idea where you are. It almost seems to be a man made island. That would take a lot of resources and even more dedication, surely. As soon as you can reach the floor with your feet, you try to get the feeling back in your body. It doesn’t work like you would have hoped it to and you climb out of the water mostly on your stomach only to flop down in the sand.

”oh man it’s so warm right here” you sigh happily. This is so nice right now. John crawls out of the water and buries himself in the warm sand beside you. You wouldn’t mind staying here for a while. You’re definitely suffering from some hypothermia at best and you know you need to take care of that, but you’re so tired.

”COULD I RECIEVE SOME HELP?”

You could use a nap and this is the perfect place for it. Maybe you could get just a few minutes of shut eye. Laying in the sun will surely warm you up enough. Then you’ll figure out where you are and what to do. Sleeping is the most important, after all. Second only to lots of booze.

”What the fuck, kid! What the hell do you think you’re doing!”

You open your eyes to come face to face with a man hovering over you. A man that you know extremely well. You’re not going to cry. You’re not.

You sob.

Your body gives out on you without warning, leaving you no time to form words in reply. Please don’t be a dream.

You’re incredibly groggy when you wake up. You feel better, which is good of course. John’s tail is tangled between your legs limpy, his scales roughing up the skin around your calves. Slowly, you push yourself upwards and push your hair back out of your face. The bed you were sleeping in is just absolutely soaked with water. That, however, is a small problem considering the room is literally half full of water. The bed is suspended from the ceiling with cables and you’re not sure the need for this.

You’re only ‘not sure’ for a few moments, though. _Bro_. You don’t want to get your hopes up, but if Bro is here, your mother has to be here, right? The only reason she wouldn’t be here is- well you don’t want to think about that. Gathering your senses, you hop out of bed and immediately become submerged up to your waist in warm water. It makes it a pain to move around, but you could not be any less concerned about this right now.

The building is small and upon opening the door you quickly find out that it definitely only this room filled with water. You wade down the hall, checking each room as you pass by. At the end of the hall there is a living room and in that livingroom there is your mother. Your living, breathing, one hundred percent alive mother.

”mom,” is all you can choke out initially. She looks to you and smiles calmly. All this manages to do however is bring you to the edge of tears again.

”Oh good, you’re awake,” she says. You make your way to her quickly, immediately collapsing into her. She pats your back softly and you slip into tears easily. ”What’s wrong, Roxy?” What’s wrong? You thought she was dead! You thought you had lost her a long time ago!

”i missed you,” you blubber.

”Aw. I missed you, too,” she hums in reply. You’d forgotten what she sounded like. Everything else is white noise to you at this point. You can barely believe this. She’s _alive_.

”i thought you were dead,” you insist between breaths. Your mother laughs warmly and it’s just absolutely the best noise.

”Why would you think that?” she asks. She has to be joking.

”u’ve been gone for over a decade!”

”No,” she replies, but she doesn’t sound certain about it. You push away from her slightly. She looks a little confused, as if counting the days in her head. She peers past you. ”It hasn’t been ten years, has it?” she questions. Bro has to take a moment himself.

”How old is Hal?”

”Six- no. Thirteen?” Your mother is exactly how you remember her. This isn’t exactly surprisingly, really. You get it from somewhere, don’t you? ”Probably.”

”So. Fifteen years?” he replies.

”Oh,” your mother says. ”Oh. Time _really_  got away from us.” You don’t know what’s worse, that they actually were perfectly fine this entire time, that they essentially forgot all about you and Rose and Dave and Dirk, or that they replaced you with another kid. They didn’t do it on purpose surely?

”Let’s get some food in you.”


	9. Fortune Days

== >

“Don’t touch me!”

The outburst startles him just as much as it startles you. You don’t need any more reason than that to retreat quickly, removing your hands from his person all at once and backing away. He looks in your general direction, his eyes still not in working condition, with a mildly confused expression like he doesn’t know where those words came from and he wants an explanation from you. Hell if you know. 

”okay no need to yell damn” you reply calmly, holding your hands out passively. Dirk’s attention leaves you quickly and you watch his eyes flicker blindly, as if he’s looking for answers in his own head. He doesn’t give you one though, which is fine with you. Someone has clearly woken up on the wrong side of the bed. ”man i’ll just leave you and your problems alone then”

He doesn’t say anything and you leave the room slowly. That was weird. Even for Dirk. You could blame it on Roxy missing, but you won’t. There’s no way he’s reacting this violently over something like that. Thinking about it, he’s been acting oddly for a while now. He’s not the only one, either. Things have only been getting worse with Roxy gone. 

The trolls are still bustling around cleaning and repairing things from the attack. You think ‘attack’ may be a bit of a strong word, really. They didn’t injure anyone which was way too unlikely to have not been on purpose. Most injuries sustained were from the panic itself. Of course, all of the merpeople are gone now, and that’s probably for the best. Not that you believe they’ll stay gone, at this rate. This only means that you’ll be buckling down the building harder and chaining them up tighter next time. 

Plus, while Rose is certain that Roxy left of her own volition, that still means she’s out there and that still means you need to know where she is and preferably bring her home. You’re assuming she’s managed to take care of herself and find somewhere to hide away and didn’t freeze to death horribly in the ocean. By assuming, of course, you mean ignoring the fact that she’s probably dead thanks to the merpeople that have no idea how humans work. Or maybe they do and this is revenge for yanking them out of the water and assuming you knew how to take care of them.

You let yourself into Rose’s office and she glances back at you passively for a moment. She turns back to her bookshelf without really acknowledging you. You nod. 

”cool cool just passing through thought i’d say hi see what you were doing about roxy”

”What?” she responds with a certain air of irritation, not even doing you the favor of looking at you. 

”roxy?? your sister? the one who’s in the ocean you know?” you reminder her gladly. Rose rolls her eyes as she tosses a book onto her desk. You watch as she opens a drawer and hoists out a bottle of unlabeled liquor. What else would it be? You’d think she’d have learned her lesson already, having fought with alcoholism before. She can make her own decisions and so you say nothing.

”Roxy got herself into this situation, she can get herself out,” comes the simple response, punctuated by Rose ripping the cork out of said bottle. 

”right that’s a perfectly acceptable response i don’t know what i was thinking” you assure her. She smiles at you sarcastically, a sweet curve just dripping with every ounce of poison she can muster. It melts into an annoyed look as she pours a very generous helping of her beverage into a finely shaped flute. ”so we’re going to do nothing is what you’re saying”

”Please Dave, tell me what you would like me to do. Shall we send out what few boats we have to search the entire ocean for her? You know, because she could literally be anywhere thanks to the mutant fish. The ocean is quite small, after all. You go get Dirk and we’ll hope in our dingy and sail into the sunset!” she offers. While you see her point, that doesn’t mean you can sit around and just do nothing. 

”so you’re giving up?” you simplify. 

”Yes Dave. I am giving up. I have lost my mother, my sister, and every ounce of progress I have put into these giant fucking fishes with faces. I have wasted my life away for nothing. Absolutely nothing,” she flourishes her hands out, half heartedly making a gesture at the work on her desk. 

”it’s not like you’re overreacting or anything” you murmur. Rose stops mid drink, staring at you with what you can only describe to be disbelief. You suddenly feel in danger. This is wrong. She puts her drink down and leans on her desk with both palm. 

”Overreacting? I don’t think you understand what’s happening Dave. My mother is dead. Your brother? Dead. Roxy? Definitely dead. All of the mermaids are /gone/. All of our work is now baseless. We are now crazy people with degrees. All this?” She gestures to her desk again. ”Pointless.” All at once, she shoves everything from the top of her desk into the floor, breaking several things in the process and decorating the floor in various bits of research. You watch quietly for a moment, waiting for the papers to stop fluttering and pieces of glass to stop rocking. 

”wow okay you need to chill”

Rose glares at you with an unwavering gaze as if you’ve insulted her greatly. When you say nothing more, she gets more aggravated with you. You’re not sure what she was expecting you to say, anyways. Anything more would have just made her that much more upset and you know it. You’ve never seen her manage her emotions like this before. She bangs her hands on the face of her desk. 

”Get out!” she shouts. You decide to leaving is in your best interest. Maybe you should get some blood test on everyone. Something weird is going on and obviously its up to you to keep this family from literally ripping each other to shreds. Great. That’s what you’re amazing at, after all. 

This is how people start discovering there’s been LSD in the water and mermaids were a joined figment of everyone’s imagination. If you turn out to be crazy you’re going to follow your dream of being a photographer. Man, you should have done that anyways. 

== >

You are very tired. However, you are simply glad that you are home now. It feels like it’s been too long since you’ve been home. Even now, you’re not completely sure how long the humans kept you. The way they tell time is inane. While you haven’t returned to your normal hive yet, it’s equally comfortable in the little medic hole with Nanna taking care of you. Your mother and Porrim coo at you loudly whenever they return to the cluster; your mother entirely relieved that you are home and Porrim having changed her tune from sad that you had been taken to entirely enraged. 

You have not told her that they were not after you, but instead were searching for Porrim. You would not want her to feel guilty about it nor do you want her to go out and attempt to harm the humans, there was nothing she could do. As you understand it, the human Rose had been saved by her years ago. However, you greatly doubt that this is the case, rather Porrim likely assumed her to be dead and dragged her ashore to prevent the humans from searching for her lately and accidentally stumbling upon you. There is no reason for her to have attempted to approach a living human now or ever. 

The human Rose wore you out completely. You had put everything into her in hope of overloading her small human brain and putting her out of commission. You were assuming that this would mean the other humans would be forced to let you and your siblings go. You never got to find out if that was the case. There seemed to be no affect on her whatsoever. Clearly you had underestimated her grandly and it is not a mistake you would make again. 

Normally, your species puts out a sort of pheromone that adjusts the life around you. This allows you to live in peace with most animals; causing sharks to ignore you, fish to not be afraid of you, and everything else to approach you without malice. You did not think this would work on the land dwelling creatures, not considering that they had chucked a harpoon through your brother without a second thought, but you’re unsure now. 

It seemed that Rose was growing somewhat fond of you over time, but you’re unsure of whether this was due to her own will or the shouting you did. And boy did you shout. You shouted at her things she couldn’t comprehend but could definitely hear and she listened. The more you think about it, though, the more sense it makes. Your ancestors lured in sailors with their songs and while you’ve grown away from this over the decades, it only stands to reason that you’d have an upper hand on the humans now.

Except, you’re not the only ones that have evolved, are you? You have no way of knowing how much damage you really did to the human. 

You don’t think you care, either. She gets what she deserves. 

Kanaya, your matesprit swims into your little recovery nest, squeezing herself in beside you and tangling her tail with yours. The coon is just big enough for the two of you to share comfortable, as it’s supposed to be. Who would expect you to recover alone? Normally, she’d probably be sniping at you for being so ‘melodramatic’, but today she obviously senses that you really are tired and though it does you no good, she is doing her best to share her energy with you. 

Vriska rubs her face against your face and her gills against your gill brashly, her aggressive affections somewhat nice. Her tail fins tangle with yours in the small, cozy pod and you really are glad to be home. Not only are you glad to be home, you’re glad to be around your family again. She pulls away from you a little and arches out her chest to exposes a patch around her collar where her under skin shows through. It’s a scar that her deep blue scales haven’t recovered yet and it reminds you how hungry you are. 

You have been kept in a tank with only Karkat and while there is nothing wrong with Karkat, you are unable to drink from him regularly. That would kill him. The humans, being smarter than you guess you give them credit for, at no point allowed you to drink directly from them. You would have killed them. 

Without hesitation, you sink your fangs into the bare spot, drinking hungrily. You have to remind yourself to be careful, however, as she’s probably still recovering from her brush in with the humans. Why she ever thought she could engage her quills while she was in a human skin is beyond you, but she was bound to have lost a lot of blood and you do not want to make her unwell too. You will get your fill later and then you won’t need to feed again for several days. 

Her blood is so warm. 

We have to destroy the humans, she says to you. You don’t agree, but you don’t really disagree either. Quite honestly, you want nothing to do with the humans ever again. Of course, though, you know this is probably not going to happen, not when John dragged Roxy into the ocean the way he did. 

The humans will stop at nothing to get her back, this you know, and it will not work out in your favor. Though honestly, what did you ever do to them in the first place? And yet they still dragged you out of your homes. They would be back regardless. So maybe she’s right, and the only way to prevent them from coming again would be to eradicate them completely. 

You don’t reply. Carefully, you withdraw your fangs from your matesprit’s flesh, drawing your tongue over the wound to close it up. She flutters her gills at you and tells you you are her matesprit.

She doesn’t sound as sincere as she used to. 

== >

You’re still pretty confused. What you’ve gathered so far is that your father, who you originally thought to not have a matesprit, actually does have one and she is actually a human. Said human is actually Roxy’s mother, which as your father tells you a human mother is nothing like your mother and instead involves weird human mating rituals and tiny humans living in larger humans? Humans are so weird. 

Furthering your confusion, she also happens to be two people? Or, no, maybe your father has two matesprits, which you’ve never heard of but you guess you could see how that could work. You don’t understand it, but your father is obviously happy and you’re not going to question it. Regardless, they’re both very nice and you are glad that they fixed Roxy.

You have no idea why your father would hide this. Apparently those days when he disappeared, as he is prone to do, he was out visiting them? Your father, being as he is a father, has little work to do at home when there are no young to be raised so it wasn’t exactly suspicious for him to be out minding his own business. 

More importantly, however, you seem to have a brother? Dad just says it so nonchalantly like it’s perfectly normal. He’s telling the truth, too, and there’s a little orange that has the same signature as your father and his matesprits and it swims without a problem and breathes air easily. It’s an impossible child and your father doesn’t seem to understand that. You let it go for now because it’s not hurting anything and again, your father is so happy. You don’t think you’ve seen him this happy for a long time. 

Uncovering your dad’s not exactly dark secret is really only your concern, though. Roxy has all but forgotten about your existance in favour of talking with your father’s matesprit. You guess mothers aren’t that different, as Roxy has been in, or nearly in, tears ever since you woke up. They’re not really sad tears at least, or rather she isn’t telling you she’s sad. 

She’s actually immensely happy. Happier than you have ever made her, at any rate. Not that you had really made an effort to try to make her happy. It wasn’t something that has occurred to you before. You sit between your dad and Roxy in part of the odd little building. The little house seemingly made with everyone’s comfort in mind with enough water to keep your tail soaked and allow you to move with ease but not enough to threaten the humans’ lives. 

This whole thing has change a lot of things for you. That, obviously, only makes you more confused. So Roxy could be your matesprit? You mean, if your dad can have two human matesprits, then maybe you don’t need to know your matesprit at first glance. 

”rite so we were really confused when it came back positive-” You have no idea what Roxy is talking about. Your father, sure enough, doesn’t know what’s going on either, but you both smile along. Everyone’s so happy, there’s really no need to understand what they’re on about. 

if your matesprit- uh- ‘s’ were here all along, why were you so down all the time? you question curiously. You had always assumed he was so sad all the time because he had lost her- them? Now that you know otherwise, it does strike you as a little odd. He ponders the answer for a moment, assuring you that it’s not altogether that simple of one. 

THEY ARE VERY SICK SON he tells you. THEY HAVE BEEN FOR A VERY LONG TIME Ah, that makes sense. You assume having two matesprits would make it even worse on your dad. Illnesses spread very easily between matesprits. THEY ARE GETTING BETTER NOW he assures you. ROXY MAKES THEM HAPPY

They definitely aren’t the only ones. Roxy looks to you suddenly and grins happily. You flutter your gills excessively in a return motion. You’re really glad she’s happy and it makes you happy. 

”john just kinda sawm into the net,” she giggles. You flip your ear fins down at once, scrunching up your nose in embarrassment. 

”did not,” you insists. You don’t recall that’s how it happened. More like a net of death suddenly descended upon you. 

”we weren’t even looking for you,” Roxy insists. ”that net literally wasn’t even for you. and you still managed to get stuck in it.”

”nets,” you say pointedly. ”are dumb.” Roxy laughs a little but it’s an affectionate noise. It had never actually occurred to you that maybe they hadn’t been trying to rip you out of the water. This is probably because weren’t they trying to help you? What were they trying to help you with? You can’t remember now. It rocks your nerves a little, though. 

”WHAT OF THE OTHERS?” Dad asks curiously. It seems unlikely now that their goal was to help you or your family. You would also like to know about the others. Kanaya definitely didn’t swim into a net and Karkat couldn’t possibly have been contained by one. Thinking more about it, you also find it very odd that they had never let you see Kanaya. It’s easier to think now, maybe you should. 

”rose!” Roxy drops everything she’s doing without hesitation. Your Dad tells her that’s not what he meant. He goes unheard. ”you have ta come back,” she says desperately, facing her mother suddenly. Mom blinks at her curiously, lips still curled up in a calm human smile. It takes her a moment to reply. She doesn’t tell you anything, and now that you think back, she hasn’t the entire time you’ve been here. You’re not sure if this is on purpose, considering most humans put everything out in the open. 

” We can’t do that,” she answers patiently. ”Little Sprite is too tiny to travel.” Roxanne explains, gesturing to the tiny miracle child slightly. The orange child wriggles actively in Bro’s lap, happily opening his mouth to receive another spoonful of mush. 

Roxy is unsure of herself. 

In hopes of calming her, you rub your tail against her legs. She glances at you halfly. You don’t think this is what she was hoping for. Her happiness and excitement seems to be slowly dwindling and it makes you sad. There’s not much you can do to help her as it is, so you can only do what you can to support her. Mom whistles at Dad pointedly. 

”Can you and your family get my kids out here?” she asks. Dad considers it for a moment. 

”I SUPPOSE” he agrees. ”BUT THE HUMANS DO NOT TRUST US” You can’t really blame them for that, but they also kind of brought it on themselves. Had they not tried to kidnap Jane, then they would have no reason to be worried. Though of course, if they could have simply not kidnapped any of you, that also would have been fairly nice. 

”And why is that?”

Roxy radiates concern suddenly and then comes worry followed by immense panic. These feelings spread to you immediately. There’s this distant noise like static, drowning out idle thoughts. It’s almost as if she doesn’t want to explain to her mother. Slowly, little tid bits begin to seep out from the cracks quickly becoming an unstoppable force of unwanted knowledge. And you hear all of it. 

”i’m sorry john” Roxy says, facing you at once. ”i’m so sorry.”

You don’t know what to do with this information. You don’t know what to do with yourself. She lied to you. You knew that from the beginning though, didn’t you, and you still thought she was trying to help you. What had you really expected? She didn’t care about you or your family. She just wanted to find her mother and she has.

So what’s the point of you now? 

You want to make an excuse to leave, but you’re incapable of thinking straight. You just thought, you thought you had found your matesprit. It’s not only that, either, there’s so much more that she’s trying desperately, fruitlessly, to cover back up and you don’t know what to do with any of it. They had no good intentions for you; she didn’t.

”I BELIEVE I CAN WORK SOMETHING OUT” Dad assures her, averting the conversation for you. He can hear it too. You know he can and he says nothing. What is he supposed to say, though? That his matesprits’ daughter is the reason none of your kin in their right mind would trust a human ever again? That the humans are afraid not because you are frightening, but they’re now worried that they’ll get what they deserve? 

No. He wouldn’t tell them that. 

You should have just listened to Karkat. You should have left when Vriska came to rescue you. You shouldn’t have fallen in love with a human. 

You’re so stupid. 

”john”

== >

”Hey.”

You stop walking for a moment, listening to the gentle waves of the water against the sandy beach. You know that voice, though you don’t think you’ve ever actually heard it before. Though, it’s not the one you wanted to hear. You were hoping, knowing that it wouldn’t happen, that Roxy perhaps would wash ashore soon.

”Dirk,” it says again and you turn toward the water a little more. ”Over here.”

”Jake?” you question blindly. You really wish he wasn’t here. Now is the worst time for him to show up anywhere near your lab. You didn’t think he would come up by himself, however, especially considering how he reacted about simply swimming to the surface. 

”Ah,” he says slowly with his mouth. ”What ‘n happen to face?” he asks with a heavy sense of worry, as if he’s not entirely sure if he’s at fault for it or not. You touch the raised skin on the lower half of your face and throat idly. You don’t think it’s too bad, but you haven’t seen it for yourself yet, either. The texture of your stitches on your fingers doesn’t seem too horrible.

”It’s nothing,” you assure him, finding it unnecessary to tell him that another one of his kind has done this to you. It’s possible that this is something you can’t keep from him, however, but you decide to put it aside for now. ”What are you doing here?”

A splash of water hits you in the face suddenly and something sharp hits the bridge of your nose. As it falls, you catch it in your fingers. It takes you a moment to feel out what it is and when you do, it’s not good news. This is the USTD you had equipped Jake shortly after your first meeting; an Under the Skin Tracking Device. 

Before you can react, Jake grabs one of your ankles and yanks you into the water, hitting the sand hard. You grab for the shore, dropping the chip in the process, but there is nothing you can fix purchase on and you’re thus dragged out to sea without a fight. Instinctively, you grasp at your face, attempting to protect your nose and mouth from the cold, salty water. You’re unable to measure the distance you’re being dragged out. 

Fortunately, he slows down eventually, carefully grabbing your arms and assuring you keep your head above the water. You’re unsure if his so called kindness has your best interest in mind. He presses his face against yours and you can feel him smile as he nuzzles you somewhat forcibly. You can feel his razor sharp teeth, too, just centimeters from your skin. You catch your breath. 

”Take me back,” you demand. 

”Not able,” Jake replies firmly. ”Your assistance is required, uh, not here.” Assistance? Roxy. This doesn’t settle your nerves even slightly. You can only guess that it’s Roxy and if it’s not, then who knows who it could be? Even if it is Roxy, there’s no telling what she could want your help with and you’re not in a hurry to find out with how things have been going lately. Plus, there’s no doubt that Rose saw this happen and you need to go back. It’s not an easy decision by any means, but Roxy made her choice. And Jake makes yours. 

You hear the sound of him sinking under the surface in a fluid motion and he swims up under you quickly, positioning you on his back in a manner that doesn’t inconvenience either of you. He grabs your legs under his arms to make sure you don’t fall off and continues his path without a second thought of your feelings about it and he knows how you feel about it. 

As it is, you’re in no position to make your way back home on your own, and remaining lost in the ocean is not something that would be wise. Being dragged away by a probably annoyed water human to assist someone who you can only assume to be your sister, isn’t much wiser. You don’t really have a say in it, which doesn’t make your situation better, but does take the outcome from your hands.

If worse comes to worse, you do have an emergency kit kept in the safety of your sylladex. You try to give him the benefit of a doubt. 

== >

”Sup.”

”oh. hey,” you smile at the young, exceedingly pale boy and he sits down in the sand beside you, curling his feet under him so they don’t get wet in the lapping waves. ”you’re hal right?”

”Yeah,” he answers distantly. 

”lol, your brother- or uncle maybe if your bro’s son actually i think-”

”Let’s not think too hard on our family tree,” he says plainly. 

”rite,” you agree. ”anyways, he had this program he made when he was younger to help him with stuff and reply when he was away. he called it auto-responder but it a sentient see and it called itself hal,” you tell him. ”i don’t know what happened to him.”

Hal doesn’t make any reply to the information you offer up. You guess it doesn’t really mean anything, anyways. It was interesting, maybe, how Dirk and Bro think so much alike. Or your mother, you suppose, since Hal is technically their kid. Despite Hal’s obvious albinism, he looks an awful lot like Dirk, albeit younger. You guess there aren’t too many genes to pull from the Strider’s pool. 

”Has your boyfriend not returned?” he asks. You sigh. 

”no. ‘m not sure he will, either. i don’t blame him,” you answer with a small shrug. You’re not that hopeful at this point. Hal is quiet for a moment, allowing you the precious seconds of loathing every decision you have ever made. 

”Is he really your matesprit?” he questions, glancing at you a little. 

”are merman matesprits anything like troll matesprits?” It’s an idle question, all with the same answer anyways. 

”Not really,” he assures you. 

”then no”

”Boyfriend?” he corrects, as if it would really make a difference at this point. You laugh a little. 

”oh absolutely not.” Even if you wish that was the case. You pull your legs up away from the edge of the water, holding them to your chest so you can rest your head on your knees. If John were to come back, you’re not even sure what you would say to him. There aren’t enough apologies in the world to make up for what you did. 

”Do you want to talk about it?” he asks you. You laugh again. 

”how old r u? twelve?” you reply, pushing his shoulder gently. You know he means well, but there’s nothing to talk about. 

”Thirteen,” he says. 

”nah i won’t bore you” you assure him. Besides, you don’t think you’d be able to talk about it right now without crying. He doesn’t say anything. He obviously isn’t much of the saying type. Just like Dirk and Bro. Dave doesn’t seem to follow this pattern. ”i don’t hate you, you know,” you tell him quietly. ”john’s dad said you probably didn’t come down to dinner because you thought i wouldn’t like you.”

He clenches his hand in the sand a little. 

”i know you probably think im upset that my mother left to raise you and blah blah blah but i’m really not,” you promise. ”i understand. i mean, hell, rose and i weren’t exactly planned children, you know. even auntie and uncle don’t really know who our dads were. ha for most of my life i didn’t know dirk was my twin i mean look at us. i still forget basically always,” you tell him. 

”You would either have to be incredibly stupid or insanely smart to accidentally clone four kids,” Hal replies. 

”lol,” you laugh. ”man i wish dirk had your sense of humor you’re not joking are you”

”You didn’t know?” he asks curiously. You take your turn for not saying anything. ”You and Dirk are perfect clones of Mama and Bro. Rose and Dave are precise mixtures of the two of them and their sister and brother respectively. When Mama found out the aquatic humans didn’t reproduce, but cloned themselves, she had to try of course. It probably didn’t hurt that her, quote, ‘biological clock was ticking’. Though I can see how you would think she would prefer to take care of a ‘natural’ flaw as opposed to a perfect clone.”

”a, there is no much wrong with that sentence you ‘n me are going to talk later. b, tell me more. about the mermaid part.” There is a lot of information here that you’re not sure you needed to know or not but now you do and hell if you’re not going to find out more. 

”That aquahominis don’t reproduce sexually? They’re incapable of it, actually. Theoretically, based on Sprite’s conception, they likely need human DNA to reproduce so they instead clone imperfect clones with the DNA of the parents and a pool of other assorted DNA and- don’t you study them? John should have told you this?” he says curiously. You’ve peaked his interests, obviously, and you’ll remember this for later, but right now you think you have a headache. 

”i-” What are you supposed to say. ”i messed up. i don’t know anything about the mermaids. i don’t know anything about john. i kidnapped him and locked him in my basement instead of trying to talk to him. i’m not a scientist, i’m a fucking kidnapper.”

”Yeah,” Hal says. ”Why did you do that?” You don’t really know the answer to this, either, but you ramble and the words fall like you really do know them. 

”i don’t know i guess i just never thought my mom would leave me like that. i thought she’s left and died in the ocean and none of the mermaid had tried to save her and i thought- i thought they would tell me what happened if they knew. i thought they would be able to know exactly what i wanted and tell me as soon as they were able. and i, man, i really really hate myself.” You loved to call Rose obsessive but here you are, having done the exact same thing she had. Hal watches you for a moment. 

”I think Mama’s glad she left,” he says and you can physically feel your smile becoming an ugly, forced mess. You turn to face your knees. ”She says that if she would have stayed, you would have turned out like her.”

And you laugh because, boy didn’t that backfire? You were saved by a merman, became obsessed, and fled into the ocean one night to wash ashore the very same island. Like mother like daughter. 

”But I think,” he continues. ”That she hates herself much more for leaving than you ever could.” You wrap an arm around him fondly, dragging him into you for a hug. ”No. Don’t do the hugging thing. Come on.”

”Are you okay?” you mother calls from the house window. You push Hal away from you playfully and he straightens his shirt out pointed. 

”we’re fine!” you assure her. 

”Good. Could you come here for a sec, Rox,” Mom says, gesturing you inside with one hand. You push yourself up a little on your hands, brushing the sand off of yourself idly. 

”lemme know if john shows up, yeah?”

”Sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> request me at themadkingsendshismilk.tumblr.com


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